


The Book Of Night Was Opened Wide

by calliopes_pen



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Transformation, Bats, Blood, Blood Drinking, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Fog, Friendship, Gothic, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Mind Control, Possession, Rats, Stake through the heart, Suspense, Vampire Turning, Vampires, Van Helsing Is Thwarted At Almost Every Turn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2019-02-14 19:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 61,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13014522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calliopes_pen/pseuds/calliopes_pen
Summary: What if Lucy didn’t return to her crypt when she was confronted with Van Helsing and crew?  What if she went away with Dracula, and thus avoided the stake?  What if Lucy targeted another to get closer to Mina, with Dracula’s assistance?  Mina finds herself making a dark choice as her husband wanders into the night, and the ripples of those choices change everything.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aaronlisa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaronlisa/gifts).



> -The request was for Mina/Lucy, and involved "something dark, spooky and maybe just a little naughty between these two." This story originally started out being simply the Mina/Lucy dream sequence you find at the beginning of chapter 2. A plot fell onto me soon after. I hope you enjoy where their relationship went, and the story that resulted around it.
> 
> -As a preference was not specified either way, this story was not Britpicked. 
> 
> -For all those that have read the novel, the story begins and diverges from canon right as everyone confronts Lucy in the graveyard. 
> 
> Another divergence from canon comes with the fact that in this version, Jonathan and Mina didn't go for a walk following the funeral of Mr. Hawkins, instead going straight home. Therefore, they don't know Dracula is in London, and the reading of Jonathan's journal comes about in an entirely different manner.
> 
> -The title comes from a passage in Lord Byron’s poem _The Dream_ , as do several moments between Mina and Lucy.

Vampires were real; those gathered in the graveyard knew this fact with an unshakable certainty.

The supernatural had been thoroughly proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to the men gathered on this night. This was not trickery; this was no fantastical illusion.

Lucy Westenra was resurrected; Professor Van Helsing had revealed this to her former suitors by showing them, for none could have believed the words alone. They had to see for themselves. He had proven to her former suitors and fiance that the young woman had died, and been possessed and corrupted; she had been reborn as a vampire. They believed her mortal trappings and emotional attachments had to have fallen away, and would merely be used against them.

The bitten child, now discarded and still, was merely asleep due to a trance. Arthur had been saved from the chance of being bitten himself, and would agree to any theory put forth to end this; he thoroughly rejected this woman’s new state of being.

They expected her to flee to the safety of her crypt when Van Helsing removed the Host from the crevices and cracks. They knew that method was no longer barred, and she could easily be confined.

They were wrong. Had Lucy truly been alone, perhaps she would have retreated. Perhaps she would have hidden. Had Lucy been alone, perhaps she would have even returned to the protection of her coffin. She would have been vulnerable the next day when Arthur and the rest returned and sent her abruptly into peace with the finality of a wooden stake piercing her heart.

Perhaps in another world this could have happened. 

Lucy wasn’t alone. There came a hiss through the night, and then a rasp, of one word. One name. ‘Lucy.’ There was grinning vengeance upon Lucy’s face as she dashed to her Master’s side. 

Instead of having a stake driven through her chest the next afternoon, Lucy saw the one man who could prevent them from harming her. With a vengeful, bloodstained grin on her lips as she glared at them over one shoulder, she darted across the cemetery with unnatural speed. She went straight to where _he_ was waiting beneath a copse of trees, which were gently swaying in the night’s wind. 

Count Dracula was waiting for his child; Lucy kissed his face and cheeks and lips, until he pulled her away. There was no further need for that in this life beyond mortality. The Count took Lucy’s hand, and, smirking, brought it to his lips. The mortals would never see his face, for he was summoning a grand fog to cover both themselves, as well as mute a portion of what conversation may emerge.

They turned together, and watched the hunters.

The men could not see his face beneath the shadows, even before the fog rolled in; they could only see his red eyes gleaming. He was shaping the shadows, the elements of the air to the best of his ability. Each man in the group feared they would be slaughtered and buried tonight. Could this have the bearings of a massacre?

Instead, fog rolled in thicker than the worst pea-souper that the heart of London had ever beheld. And it was all concentrated in this meeting place, between presumed hunter and prey. Moments later, Van Helsing heard sporadic and thanklessly muffled words, and knew this was melodramatically conjured around them all both for privacy, as well as a potential cover so that none could see what approached them before they were cut down where they were standing. “Do all have their protection?” Van Helsing wondered.

There was silence at first before sounds reached him. Van Helsing sighed in disgust as he made to step forward. Shaking his head, he chose to stay in one spot for his own safety. “Do not move, for we may come to harm!” He shouted. It felt like he was alone, but he knew the others were certainly near. “One or more might trip and come to harm among the dead.”

Van Helsing could hear muffled words, and knew it was vital that he listen. There came the name Mina from what was once Miss Lucy’s dear mouth, and a laugh from the vampire who had changed her. Something else, unspoken, passed between them, before they spoke aloud any further.

How close were they to him? How close was he to either friend or foe on this black and mysterious night? By the voices almost blocked, he learned to his relief that friends were closer. “Move none of you too far or too quick,” Van Helsing urged. His fingers had brushed marble, moldy and ill cared for. “Headstones bring a terrible end when the neck goes snap and the head is cracked open. I feel one or two or three in this location.”

They all looked around, though, for they could hear voices ringing out clearer. They were stuck, unable to do anything but listen as frequently voices drifted to them, before being covered. They only heard partial words, and plots for future deeds. Perhaps, the Professor mused, there was also thought transference involved with these creatures to make it doubly irritating.

Lucy was pulled back into the mental conversation. **_‘You know of his offices in Devonshire, I presume?’_** Dracula asked, almost haughtily. He knew, due to the exchange of correspondence with Mr. Hawkins. He would ignore the humans bound by his will and his fog for this instant. They could do nothing.

 _‘I bit him there first, just outside his office in the gloom,’_ Lucy mentally hissed. _‘And again in Exeter on his doorstep that very same night, when I managed to make him think he’d left his briefcase behind. I called on him again, just before dawn that night…but I didn’t take as much, before I flew away.’_ In a strangely adoring tone, she accidentally slipped and spoke the rest aloud. “She interrupted us with a broom when he was at the window.”

 ** _‘Fool! You might have killed him too soon, or left naught but a husk behind and revealed us,’_** he growled. **_‘How many of the children did you require after you glutted yourself on him?’_** In his rage, thought transference was going to be discarded if he continued, lest he destroy her mind.

Lucy and Dracula were locked together emotionally as well as physically as they briefly grappled. She moved to strike him; he held her arms down. They were bound by blood. Internal dialogue only became vocal when they slipped and spoke in the heat of the moment.

They slipped now, for Lucy had grown impassioned and wild. She shook his arm as she continued to speak.

“No,” a voice the men knew was Lucy hissed loud enough for all to hear. “They were dessert after Exeter; they haven’t enough in those tiny bodies to fill me!” A musical laugh was followed by something they couldn’t understand. Was there an argument brewing? No, surely not. “I’ve bitten him often enough. I will have my Mina through Jonathan. I’ll pull him to me. He will protect me in the day, or we change him and them.”

She slid back into that peculiar manner of speech, then. _‘Mina will always follow him; be generous and allow me to go to her,’_ she begged. _‘Her mind will be a boon to you! I can keep them together, and take care of them!’_

Dracula shook his head, thinking that sounded not unlike keeping them around as pets. Or it would have, were it not for the look in her eyes. She was young; she was still making errors in judgment. A vicious smile grew across his lips as his words turned soft, though no less cruel. “No, my Lucy. They will be shared. They will be… _ours_. He is mine halfway, or was before you began to take all of his blood and endanger him. _She_ will be yours, as you so desire. If what I see of your memories is apt, it has always been thus.”

He didn’t care for her blushes if her body could have produced them. He cared little for the tattered vestiges of unneeded and discarded purity when she was like him. He nodded to himself. Yes, if the way to either was through the other, then so mote it be.

“Jonathan was mine once, and shall be again,” the Count continued in a sinister tone. “You have tormented those little ones enough to satisfy. We are resolved in our chosen prey, are we not? Then, so shall it be.” A burst of wind shot through the cemetery, then, dispersing much—if not all—of the fog as the trees bent with the force of it. It subsided as quickly as its arrival, though a ring of the mist was still evident in the small area surrounding the men.

His words held amusement as he continued. “They will be ours. He is mine halfway, and all the safer under my wing than wandering about in the dark. Come!”

 _‘He is all the safer in mine own protection,’_ he noted mentally, quieter, with a slow smile as he drew Lucy close. The rage had dissolved. _‘Those nights were yours. However…when tomorrow night comes, and every night thereafter, for as long as it takes once you have lured **him** into our clutches? Those nights are **mine**. Come!’_

“Be on your guard,” Quincey warned. He was already alerted to the wrongness of the residual circle as it shifted and squirmed like a living thing.

More words reached their ears, this time from the man whose name they still had not heard. “How long?” The Count mused, as if in answer to an unspoken declaration.

“Four nights, save the time in which he was prevented; she thinks I was prevented twice,” Lucy gleefully replied. She would gloat for her success. “No blood of _mine_ has been yet offered.”

They could make out the Count’s silhouette as the fog thinned. Then, both profiles were gone, as though they never were, even as Van Helsing clutched his cross just in case.

Then, the sounds changed and Van Helsing could hear the buffeting as of the great wings of some nocturnal creature. An owl, or a bat could be the source, but it was not natural. The mist parted, and revealed it to be a bat for an instant. A large one. Arthur cried out as another smaller one swooped downwards, only to be lost again.

Arthur gave another cry as the larger of the two bats swooped low and almost bit him. The first, smaller bat flapped closer once again, and all drew forth crosses and crucifixes to defend their friend. The attack ended as abruptly as it began. Arthur caught his breath as he lifted a lantern and looked himself over. “I am…unharmed,” he assured them, though he was terrified. He glanced over to Van Helsing. “Professor, _what_ do we _do_?”

Quincey raised his arm to fire off a shot, but realized the error of that idea even as Seward reached over and grabbed his arm. As best as they could, they shared a look and a nod. Neither needed to speak. Thankfully, the fog was dispersing.

Van Helsing sighed. He scarcely knew, either. “We return to my hotel room, if none of us have further appointments. There we wait until morning, and we see if she has returned to her resting place. We widen our searches.”

He turned to Quincey, with a half smile. “Ordinary bullets do not stop the extraordinary bats. There, see? With their departure, our vision clears.” He looked around at the thin mist. “No bites? None? We continue and place the child where others will find it, and it comes to no further harm.”

Quincey held up a hand for pause. “Who’d she bite?”

Good, Van Helsing thought. He had heard that, too. “Miss Lucy knew a Miss Mina, from her short-lived diary. I have yet to read the letters between the women in full, having just uncovered them, and begun reading from the most recent date to the oldest,” Van Helsing began. He regretted not finding the time, for he might know her location even now. “This Mina went to collect her so ill Jonathan. It could be that he and they, wherever they dwell, they are in danger. Before it is time for solemn duty great, I try to learn,” he swore.

Until he knew the contents of those letters, and more of this Mina’s life and heart, Van Helsing would say nothing further with his assumptions. “Do we all swear to bring Miss Lucy a true peace, and end this blight?”

He was methodical. He would have facts before he set foot in their home. He would stake the dear Miss Lucy and bring her peace before that, though.

They all shook hands; they were resolved to see this through to the end, and bring Lucy peace.  
\--

If Lucy had already laid claim to this Jonathan, along with her creator, then Van Helsing knew that this Miss Mina was potentially unknowingly living with a dangerous contamination already. Perhaps the man had moments left before he fully changed.

They were already too late for most things in this dreadful saga. 

“I must read those letters, John,” he quickly said as they returned to his hotel to regroup. “You three need to be fed to be kept strong, as well. No disturbances from you, save for miracles or destruction or fire,” he distractedly continued as he moved to close a small bedroom door.

“I trust you will notice if this establishment should burn down around you,” Seward called to him. There was no reply. Then again, Seward mused—knowing the Professor’s potential for becoming lost in his studies or just in the maze of a favored subject, perhaps he _would_ be the last to know of such a situation.

With a gesture, he let Arthur and Quincey know it would be best to sit down and wait. They could rest if they needed to do so.

After an hour and a half, Van Helsing at last extricated himself from his reading. He was already attired in his travel cloak, and clung to his satchel. Seward rose to meet him, only for Van Helsing to shake his head. “No, John. I must see they are warned; should I return three hours hence, and you grow not restless, we four go together to do our grim work upon Lucy’s body.”

Seward glanced to Arthur, asleep in a chair. He didn’t need to hear this. Quincey nodded his own assent after he realized the desire for quiet. “Then decided it is,” Van Helsing murmured. Without further comment, he left for his hopeful errand of mercy.

Quincey leaned forward. “If he don’t return, we’re stranded without that carriage that brought us,” he noted.

The thought brought a smile to Seward’s face, for the first time in what felt like a long time. It was such an absurd thought, for he was right. “I can hire another, should he lose my first.”

A half hour later, though, Van Helsing was back. “My journey will be long, and the train schedule later, for a breakage of something vital down the line. They require an engine serviced. I could never be back in time, therefore I wait with you.”

“Where do they live?” Seward asked. “I need the carriage and can take part of the journey with you before we switch to another. I could wire ahead before the transfer,” he offered. “One could meet us before we part ways. We can do this, after—after Lucy, as you say.”

“Exeter,” Van Helsing reminded him. They had all heard the words in the graveyard, though perhaps they had not drifted fully to certain ears. Or he had too much on his mind. “They are in Exeter. Many thanks, friend John,” he finished succinctly. He gestured for the men to follow him, as he left for a second time.

The time had come to finish their work. Lucy would be granted peace. The sun was high enough, and therefore that hellspawn which had replaced her would not enthrall them. He took up his satchel and placed two wooden stakes within it. He was ready. Were his friends?

When they returned to the Westenra crypt, however, they were prevented from their appointed task. They knew Lucy’s body must surely rest in her coffin by day, but for one very important matter.

The coffin itself was missing from the Westenra tomb.


	2. Chapter 2

Mina Harker found herself growing weary as the night dragged on, and the wax melted from her candle. Mina’s eyes were drawn to the faint speck of light that marked it on the bureau. A shadow moved on the wall, cast by its light; it looked like a person had stepped into the bedroom, just out of her view. 

She sat up in the chair with a sigh, for she was almost certainly letting herself get caught up in some form of hysteria. She must see to the household errands while there was still time! Jonathan was ill, and this was the only hour in which she could see to particular things, for he was between his wrongness, and his proper mind. And so she had sought privacy in the guest bedroom, so that she would not disturb him, and would simultaneously hear him should he give a cry.

It was just an unfamiliar room, in a just inherited house that she had yet to fully explore and learn the nuances for.

Instead of rising to walk out of the room, she crossed the room and sat down on the bed. She would do this for one moment, she insisted to herself. Her eyes were drawn back, almost hypnotically, to that candle as she lay down. She shook her head quietly in wonder, for it was such a tiny thing that had entertained her at this late hour. 

It looked as though the flames, such as they were, first danced and then split about the candle, which was almost gutted. Above them, part of it, two red eyes were forming. Dread curled in Mina’s heart, but as she continued to watch, an unnatural lethargy crept into her bones. 

The candle blew out, but she could still see thanks to the coals that dimly glowed in the grate. She also still saw those eyes, twisting and moving, writhing in the air. They were locked on her own. The eyes were almost certainly just something that stemmed from a lingering memory of a comment made by her friend Lucy Westenra, while they were in Whitby.

“His red eyes again,” Mina recalled aloud, though her voice was the barest of whispers. It most certainly wasn’t real. Just as she said that, the eyes disappeared.

A feather light touch brushed her arm, as the blankets were filled. It felt as though something moved to occupy the space beneath the covers without actually pulling them back. A body rolled closer. What had joined her? She should be afraid of this demonstration. She knew that. It felt as though she were only calm and placid and awaiting each moment that might extend itself to her. She should shout for Jonathan.

Why should she? She thought instead, even as she opened her mouth. She felt more uncertain than was common for her. She rolled over to see who was beside her in the bed, and it was only Lucy.

Of course it was Lucy. Why shouldn’t it be her? Why should she fear her presence? Even an entrance like that, so mysterious and filled with mystique, was little more than a playful game when she beheld those eyes.

They were so red and wild. She was lost in them. A sound of an owl hooting too close to the window was unexpected enough that it began to jar her mind loose from the spell that was being weaved. She frowned.

Lucy was supposed to be at Hillingham, wasn’t she? “No,” Lucy whispered in Mina’s ear as she grasped her shoulder. The sound of her voice was as expected to Mina as the wind on the moors. “I am always to be with you, Mina. Only you, and you will love me.”

“Only you,” Mina agreed softly. How had she heard her? Had not those been her most private thoughts? Did it even matter? There was a pause as though the world was waiting for what was to come. Then, their lips met. Mina thought of nothing more for a time, amongst a sea of touches that led her to blissful heights of sensual beauty such as she had rarely felt before.

Minutes passed, and finally in their wake, Mina’s breath came in gasps as she clutched the pillow to her chest with shaking hands. She reached one of her hands out with trepidation, as though she must surely see Lucy vanish like a spirit in the night. This couldn’t be real. Her fingers trailed down Lucy’s collarbone.

This felt natural to Mina. This felt right. This felt honest and true. There was no danger here. The last words cycled through her mind as though planted there.

Lucy had such a beautiful throat, and now it seemed unmarred by what Mina recalled as that dreadful pinprick where she certainly had pinched her through tender flesh. It was white as porcelain now, and that felt like she knew it to be a mistake. Had something happened? 

Why did Lucy glance away furtively? Her smile was so wicked, so bright, as though she had almost accomplished a goal that she had scarcely dared to dream. 

Lucy smiled, teeth sharp and white. She covered Mina’s lips with her own once more, and then pulled back, eyes glowing red like hellfire. This was still Lucy, though; Lucy changed, but Lucy all the same. Mina would not run from her dearest friend.

Even if she could move from her place reclined on the bed, she would not. “Tell me,” Mina pleaded gently. 

“When he comes to you, the book of night will open wide.” Lucy’s enigmatic words would echo through Mina’s mind, just as they reached her ears.

What could she mean? Mina didn’t understand at first, before the words struck a chord in her memory. It was a poem she and Lucy favored. Lord Byron had penned those words. It meant something, and she would find meaning in those words. And was it her imagination, or did the words truly resonate with an uncanny power?

Lucy continued to speak, and had become the center of Mina’s world. She felt as though she was being pulled into her friend’s eyes. Her friend’s _red_ eyes, she realized at last, which burned hotter and brighter than before. She realized they shouldn’t be red; no person’s eyes burned in such a manner. “When he comes to you. When he goes to him, you will know what I want you to say,” was all that Lucy would say further on the topic. Her red eyes burned ever brighter. Mina’s head was beginning to hurt.

All thoughts passed away, and the ache subsided.

Mina rolled slowly over with Lucy in a tight embrace until the former leaned atop her. She could feel her cool breath on her throat. Why was it so cold? Why had she only just begun to notice? Mina continued speaking, though, for her next words felt only natural in this hour. It felt as though Lucy was pulling them out of her. “I will always love you, for the rest of our days and nights.” She didn’t understand the cause for Lucy to suddenly laugh, low and throaty.

“Oceans of love for all eternity, my Mina,” was all Lucy said in reply.

Lucy’s skin was too pale, and her breath was still when Mina began to focus on what was happening. Come to think of it, who had let Lucy into the house? How had she appeared in that magical way? As her cheek rested on her friend’s chest, never once could Mina hear the beating of her heart. There had to be an explanation. Mina soon realized that there was none whatsoever. None, save for one. Mina gasped, but could find no words. 

Her friend couldn’t be dead. This couldn’t be a ghostly visitation.

Lucy suddenly lunged for Mina’s throat; while she wanted to shout in surprise, she couldn’t. She felt a searing pain in her throat, and realized at last the source of those marks on Lucy’s throat, as well as Jonathan’s. Something, someone, had bitten them. The searing pain eased into pleasure; she had been about to push at Lucy; she tugged her closer instead.

What bit Lucy? If it were some manner of person, for that matter, then _who_ bit Lucy? The exquisite sensation erased the questions from her mind. Mina moaned as all thoughts fled. She tried to hold her tightly to her, but was growing weaker.

They would be breathing in tandem were it not for the fact the woman drinking her blood no longer had cause to fill her lungs with air. 

Suddenly, the woman atop her was gone. It felt like Lucy had been pulled from her by another. Mina gasped, desperate and frightened at the loss. Her hand outstretched for her, she cried out, “Lucy!”

There was no reply. Mina’s aching loss was all encompassing.

The fog was gone. The night was quiet and still. Mina found herself on her knees at the edge of the bed, trying to catch her breath as she clutched at a phantasm that must have only existed in her dreams. There were tears in her eyes, for she was practically bereft at the loss of contact.

She felt uncertain and lost. Had her reactions only been the simplicity of a dream? That couldn’t be the case. The window was open. The curtains blew gently, as she felt the breeze. 

The curtains were meant to be closed, weren’t they? 

Jonathan must have left it so, for he had complained of the warmth earlier. Hadn’t he? No, that was two weeks ago, and it was autumn in full swing now. She remembered now. The room had grown too stuffy for her liking, before her head had touched the pillow.

She touched the left side of her throat. Shaking fingers revealed a drop of blood. It didn’t feel anything like two pinpricks were there, though. Not as it had been on Lucy. It didn’t feel like a ragged wound. “Lucy,” she mused. “You weren’t there, but somehow you were.”

She touched her lips, remembering the feel of another woman’s upon her own. In the moments between getting up and putting a nightgown on over her bedclothes, she went still with dread and turned back. 

All thoughts of _that dream_ fled, for she knew what was missing. She shivered, and then fully realized it wasn’t the most glaring of problems. She had distantly heard a noise like footsteps in her twilight state of mind, before she had fully risen.

She ran to the room next door.

 _Jonathan_ was gone.

He had been seeing monsters in the shadows of late. He had murmured strange things of ladies of the pit returning for his soul. It was far too soon after his return from the grips of brain fever. It was too much of a strain on his mind for him to pick up his life as it had been. That was merely Mina’s unprofessional opinion.

He had marks on his neck, like Lucy…ever since he had arrived home the night of September 25th, having walked from his offices, when he had been waylaid by something that he claimed was just an animal in an out of the way road. He hadn’t allowed Mina to truly see them, not at first. Not until the second time he managed to stumble away for the lie of consulting with a confidant from the practice and locating his briefcase, before she found him almost prostrate on the front step not one hour later. She had gathered him to her; she had taken him to bed; she had resolved to nurse him back to health if she could this time. 

She had to tie Jonathan to the bed on the night of the 26th, to prevent him from leaving in such a strange manner again. Millicent, the maid that came with Mr. Hawkins’ house, had seen what manner of behavior Jonathan exhibited and aided her in keeping him confined. He had loosened his bindings but once that night, and they had found him at the window.

There was blood on his lips, but none within his mouth, and he was addled; she and Millicent determined it was not consumption, and scrubbed his face of it. There was blood on his neck, for the wound had reopened. Mina had daubed the blood gently away from his face and those marks, before both women gently re-tied his wrists and bound his ankles.

The morning of the 28th, the maid had left. 

Mina was beginning to regret allowing her to leave. Without Millicent, she was on her own as she saw to Jonathan’s care. While she did so enjoy the woman’s company in better times—even if it had been a short time, following the inheritance of this house from Mr. Hawkins—she had guessed her duties just could not be expected to cover this. 

Jonathan’s ailment was becoming so strange, and no servant should have this be something they were forced into helping with.

Mina had urged the woman to see to her own needs, and find a better place. She knew a jovial lady down the lane in severe need of assistance with particular tasks, and wrote Millicent a letter of recommendation. They both knew it had to be temporary; they both hoped this was nothing too strenuous. However, the relief and all too quick acceptance on her face showed that nursing was not in Millicent’s repertoire. Not for one night; most certainly not for _two_ nights.

Mina dubbed her an angel in disguise for lasting so long.

Jonathan had apologized by morning, only recalling snatches of a dream where someone was calling to him and singing out that all he had to do was throw open the sash, open the windows, and answer. He had to meet them. He had to touch them. He had to speak to them, and become one with them.

It didn’t make sense in the daylight, and he could not tell her who ‘they’ were.

Mina and Jonathan both knew it was getting worse. They concluded this as she brought him tea that morning. It was growing dangerous, and servants could only muddle the affair, such as it was. While he was in his correct mind and not a stranger with wild intent, they discussed it. Neither could admit it. Jonathan chuckled once, and had stated it was a mercy he didn’t shriek this time, while he was tied down. He knew he had during brain fever. 

Mina still heard the sadness and strain behind the fragile laughter. She squeezed his hand. Hearing those comments—guessing how he had been dealt with in his first days, no matter what had been written to her to keep her from worrying—Mina vowed that she would not _ever_ tie him down again if she could help it.

‘There were red eyes,’ was his admission then. They had appeared in both the window at the convent, and here, at night. The mention pained him, and he fell mute for a few minutes; she only wet a cloth to help him wash his face of sweat from the night before. She knew better than to ask the extent of those delusions lest they bring the rest back to haunt him. 

Mina would not open _that_ Pandora’s box unless there were no other choice. He would tell her what he could, when he could. If she meddled too soon, it could do irreparable damage.

She would _not_ lose him to this! That vow soon became her silent mantra whenever she saw his increasing weakness, and heard the tremor in his voice.

Which led them to now, Mina sighed even as she searched. Where was Jonathan? He had marks on his neck, like Lucy…and now, perhaps, like her, for there had been blood. Mina stepped closer to the glass of the hall’s mirror, so that she might verify whether some dreaded contamination had found its way to her. She pushed her hair back so that she might better see, and finally drew in a long breath filled with relief. The mirror revealed she was safe. There were no marks, aside from the thinnest of scratches made by her own nail, she noticed.

A few drops of blood were still there, and she wiped them away.

The source of both the dream and the marks on her were explained. Well, most of it. Her love for dear Lucy and her aching worry for Jonathan had combined, and given her a sense of loss, on a hot sultry night that had grown cold. What of him? What of Lucy? She had to find Jonathan. And then, in time, she would pen a letter to Lucy and determine what could be spoken of, with such a dream. What could be spoken of without sounding like a madwoman and her equally mad husband?

A loving friendship that was an ocean deep had formed between herself, Lucy, and at times, Jonathan. Mina lit a new candle, and moved through the house. Where would he go on this night? It was his third night’s excursion, and he had been so weak lately that she was astounded he’d made it this far. The breeze, and a wisp of fog caught her by surprise.

The candle blew out. The back door was wide open. Mina found an old lantern they had in case of emergencies, and hurried to the porch to find her husband. 

No. Not this time, not again! He would not be sickened further, would he? She heard a small moan and realized she wasn’t too late after all. As she turned, she caught a glimpse of his head moving from side to side. There he was; he had been catching his breath on the divan before he fled. In an instant, skirts barely tripping her in her haste, she slammed the door shut.

If _he_ didn’t open the door, what power _had_? 

“Mina?” Jonathan called, confused as he rubbed his face. The loud noise had startled him fully awake. “I heard the wind. It felt like there was something driving me forward.”

It was upsetting how weak his voice was, but Mina had to be strong. She smiled gently at him. She resolved not to treat him like a child; she would tell him the truth. It looked like he had lost the small bandage she put on those marks. They looked raw to her eyes, as though he had scratched them open. “You were not in your right mind, and sought to leave again. I prevented that.”

While he was evidently more than a little curious and bewildered, Jonathan’s face grew solemn for the fact that he just didn’t know how he had ended up in this location. “I know a voice was calling me. Did you hear anyone calling from the yard? Is there a visitor? Shouldn't we greet them?”

“No,” Mina softly replied as she helped get him upstairs. They took one step at a time, and there was a wild moment when she feared he might topple backwards and take her with him, before he righted himself. She patted his hand consolingly, before they moved again.

He was dazed, and unable to account for his whereabouts when she questioned him—or rather, his future ones, and why he felt he must go loose and likely frighten the neighbors if they found him out and about at this time of night.

Once they were back in the bedroom, and he was covered, she waited him out.

“I have somewhere I must be,” he dazedly began. “I have a client that needs me.” His face was whiter and he was clammy. There was a nervous energy about him, which gradually began to pass as Mina gently brushed his forehead with the tip of her finger.

“I’m sure any client can wait until the cock crows,” Mina smiled softly. This was a familiar argument from him.

“Not this one,” Jonathan murmured strangely. Finally, he sagged against the pillows, shielding his eyes from the lights of the gas with his hand. At last, after a quick peek where she caught the apology in his eyes, he made a noise of disgust and rolled away so that he wouldn’t face that direction.

Mina had noticed that he hated lights, whether they were bright or dim, in his illness. 

She had begun to chart the progress of Jonathan’s condition both day and night, within the pages of her diary. There was little else she could do, and it could prove of assistance at a later date. Or if he was well again, she could show him the explicit details of moments that he might not recall. Traveling to the library to research his symptoms or the region he had traveled to prior to his brain fever was out of the question, in case he should require her presence.

Mina quietly sat down in the chair she had set up previously, so that she might keep an eye on him. The guest room was too far to safely keep track of him she realized. She waited until his breathing slowed before she herself began to relax. Gradually, bit-by-bit, he fell asleep. He was far too weak to do otherwise, and she moved to her bureau. She looked beneath the attire she had worn when she went to collect her dear husband from his sick bed in Romania. She pulled forth what she had been seeking.

She sat down, and placed it in her lap for a long moment as she pondered her situation.

She positioned the journal on the nightstand; it was still wrapped in paper, and blue ribbon; that hadn’t torn. It was still sealed with wax with the impression of her wedding ring; that hadn’t cracked, she was pleased to see as she traced the outline with the tip of her finger, before looking over at Jonathan. 

She still knew the clue to his current woe _must_ be in there. 

The time had come to break the seal, and throw open the metaphorical lock. If that didn’t hold the answers, she didn’t know where they could turn for help. Should she read it, though? 

She looked back to Jonathan, and knew she must. 

Mina noted that even when he slept now, Jonathan’s brows were knit together. He just looked like someone trying to parse and unknot a great mystery for the ages; it was something that was not his own problem to worry about, but which he had undertaken under some odd principle of the thing. She brushed his hair away from his eyes. He looked so unlike himself with the ghostly pallor.

His hair was still liberally sprinkled with white, which had yet to fade, adding to the thought. What had he seen? What had he experienced to cause that?

He didn’t look like a man on the precipice of a nervous collapse. She was certain of that. However, he _did_ claim to be hearing the voices of beings that were not manifestly there when he had slipped up, and she didn’t know what to call that.

That suitor of Lucy’s was a doctor and owned a sanitarium, but Mina just couldn’t think of such a place as ever being a good fit for Jonathan. Their attentions would be divided, and they wouldn’t be able to focus solely on his needs. She would only reach madness herself if she continued to fret about that potential outcome. She had heard such horrible tales of the manner in which inmates in other places were treated.

Mina sighed and tried to stop thinking of what ifs and only of the present. She would not be a silly goose.

She moved her hand towards the scissors she had kept close by to slice the ribbon, and started at two noises. First, the clock chimed to signify the midnight hour. Then, Jonathan gave what she would best term as a chuckle that was both delighted and unholy in the fiendishness of it. It was startling, for he had been so deeply in the grips of sleep when she had touched him before.

Was this the prelude to another run through the night? His tongue seemed tied at noon, but this hour brought something else forth. Something that made her think they needed spiritual help, and not a doctor of the mental _or_ physical caliber. Something else was harming him, riding his sleeping mind, and it wasn’t madness.

It was something damned. It was unnatural, and even the eyes were not his own. If madness was what it was, then his madness had spread unto her, and she was seeing that which was but a fantasy being spun about. The thought was lurid and horribly dramatic, but it was the only thing she could put her finger on. The fact she used the word unnatural to describe Jonathan wasn’t quite right.

In this hour, it must fit.

Jonathan behaved as a stranger; his eyes were hooded and glinted in the light as he rolled to face her. His face was sweaty, as though a fever had hold of him, while he was worryingly paler than before; in contrast, his eyes were bright and merry, though Mina felt that he should look weak and distant. “Let me out. Let me go to her. Let me go to _them_. She misses you as much as _he_ wants _me_. I can feel it.”

He licked his lips. “We shall _both_ go when the time is right,” he exulted with an undercurrent of laughter in his voice.

“Who?” Mina breathed. Was this really just another spark of brain fever igniting after all? He spoke with all the certainty of a prophet delivering news of Judgment Day. His cheeks were ruddy in his excitement. Mina was taken aback, for he had been so white for so long. It should have filled her heart with gladness.

It didn’t, for this was not the glow of health and vitality. It was not a fever, which had broken in this man. An evil spell continued to be cast over his spirit.

She shivered, for there was a seductive wickedness in his manner that was alien to his nature. He was a proper young man; he was a good husband, educated and organized, and willing to make something of himself as a solicitor. This wasn’t him, was it? There was a glimmer of that former volcanic energy in his driving need to get something done, but it had been diverted towards a nefarious purpose. Instead of answering her, he only grinned and began to sit up. 

Mina calmly moved to put her hand on his chest to stop him. She thought she saw something dark pass over his features, and took it for a trick of the moonlight as the clouds moved just outside; his posture altered almost imperceptibly, though he didn’t move any further. 

“Let him come to me,” Jonathan ground out in a quiet tone that held danger. When she didn’t step away, his next words were hissed. “You _will_ move.” Fury boiled beneath the surface of his words.

A pall of fear hung over her, and stole her voice away for an instant. “No, I will not,” Mina firmly replied at last, as she tried to channel the sternest schoolmistress she knew within her voice. Something told her that if she let him go now, she would never see him again. She knew she couldn’t overpower him, and quietly raised a brow as he slipped into the third person. 

His voice sounded deeper in his fury. In this state, he was the stronger. She kept the scissors in her other hand, should she for some nightmarish reason be required to strike back against something that might do her harm.

Jonathan would never harm her, but this being was not he. Those eyes heralded that knowledge. She knew this with more assurance than she had known anything else in her life.

Her heart quickened in her chest; it was loud enough to her own ears. Could he hear it, too? The smirk and the leer that were directed deep into first her eyes, and then her over her chest, before it came to rest upon her throat insinuated that he could. 

Thoughts of what Lucy had done in her dream returned, but for a fouler reason. She knew she must not think of that at a time like this, but she found herself doing so all the same. 

She only knew she must try to make him see reason if she could reach his conscious mind. Or stay here for so long as to make it cease altogether. He glared at her response in a way he never had before, and the redness—which she knew now to be no possible trick of the light, for it had lingered and brightened for so long—appeared like the glow of the fireplace, were the remnants not long since ash.

No embers sparked to explain that light as a reflection, but Mina did not back down. Jonathan’s expression hardened, growing tight with anger at being detained. 

The barest of pressure was felt at her palm as he began to push her away. The palm of her other hand was sweaty; the scissors grew slick, and she feared what she might be forced to do. “This isn’t you,” Mina whispered. “You will fight this compulsion, Jonathan. You will be returned to me, just as the sun delivers you your mind every morning.”

The sight of the scissors seemed to give her husband, if she could call him that at this minute, both pause and entertainment. There was amusement in those eyes, and a pressure increased both within her mind, as well as without it. Her head ached, but she didn’t let go. She didn’t look away. There was cruelty in his eyes, too, now; there was an arrogance that didn’t belong there.

Mina’s small gold cross fell free from beneath her gown’s collar and swung before his eyes. To her surprise, he spat out a hiss and a word that should have left her chastising Jonathan in any other situation, even as he shuddered. She didn’t move. The pressure against her hand soon decreased. 

In her mind, Mina could only pray and hope that this was a turning point. 

Jonathan leaned back slowly and collapsed backwards onto the bed, as his eyes fell shut. Mina moved with him, and saw that his eyes were his own once more, exhausted and calm. The eerie light had gone away.

The restlessness, however, remained as they closed again. His head moved from side to side. The murmuring began again, but softer; Mina leaned close to catch the words, even as she stroked his face to ease some of the fear that became apparent.

“Lucy,” Jonathan moaned softly. Mina knew they were best of friends when they were small, but this seemed like more. She suspected that part was but a dream, and therefore of no accounting for his illness. “Sir, I will come. Please stop. _Please_ ,” he continued in a desperate whisper that she almost couldn’t catch, for it was so faint. “I _will_. I haven’t forsaken anyone.” 

He quieted, just before his entire body abruptly tensed. His face quivered, before he scowled violently in his sleep.

When she thought he wouldn’t push her away or strike out, Mina moved closer to pull back one eyelid. He was still deeper asleep than not, but she confirmed to herself this was real. It was no passing phenomenon. Jonathan’s pupils _were_ glowing red. It was a steady pulse of light in the iris. Or rather, at the point at which she did this, they had been. As she managed not to cry out at the brightness, and a look of unexpected anger, it abruptly subsided. He relaxed in what seemed a true sleep, and she let go. 

She saw the steady breathing of a man utterly undisturbed and so sound asleep that his outburst of before shouldn’t have occurred.

Jonathan curled up, and began to shift closer to her. He shuddered as though he was very cold. Mina felt that it hurt to see him like that, and so gave him an extra blanket. One comforting hand remained on his shoulder, until he sighed. He must have felt it, but didn’t shrug her off. As he was wont to do when himself, he smiled a gentler smile in his sleep, and moved closer to the touch. 

There. It had ceased…for now. Finally, the true scope of events caught up with her.

Mina dropped the scissors to the floor; they struck the carpet with a muted thump, and she covered her face with shaking hands. This cross was a marriage gift from Sister Agatha, before she and Jonathan had departed the convent’s hallowed halls. Mina sank to the floor, taking in great heaving breaths as it slowly sank in what she surely must have just done.

Had she faced down the devil himself? What in Heaven’s name was using Jonathan? Jonathan made a quick noise that was a cross between a whimper and a sigh; he thrashed momentarily on the bed, as though finally released from a choking grasp. 

Mina quickly rose to her feet and wiped her face, before she neared the bed. She waited, and let the cross hang loose at her throat for now. She watched Jonathan for a long minute. When she decided that it was safe, she tucked it away into the collar of her gown once more. 

It might hurt him when he was awake otherwise, if he was linked with an infernal creature of any kind.

His own breathing was steady. This settled it, Mina decided tearfully as she rubbed his back. She moved, and began to pace, uncertain and agitated. She would wait for him to awaken _as himself again_. She would learn what he remembered. She would know if he were lying, through his own want to do so or not. Then, she _would read his godforsaken journal_.

She would save her husband’s soul or join him in whatever might come to strike against them. He would never be alone in this.

What of Lucy? Mina thought. She had had her own fancies of her dear friend, and knew they were matched. Had something befallen her after Mina had left her side? Was that where that exciting dream had come from? Had something come first for her, and then for Jonathan? Was the speaking of Lucy in this manner something else?

Jonathan murmured 'please,' and Mina turned. Though he was sitting up again, he wasn't speaking to her. Nor was he awake, or behaving in a manner she should flee from. It was close to dawn, and she had to keep him inside for a little longer before he would cease this. Though it wearied her now, she could catch a nap in the afternoon if Jonathan appeared to be out of danger. 

"Come back," Jonathan whispered forlornly, before he lay back down of his own volition. This time, there were no red eyes.

From the corner of her eyes, she detected movement at the window and rose to see what it could be. There was something in the yard. Mina saw something in the shadows near the flowerbed, and squinted carefully until she could discern what it was. 

There were two large dogs staring back at her, still and silent. Then, they went into motion and began running across the lawn. Perhaps they were only strays, but she thought something was wrong with them. No, she realized as the edge of another circle of light from the street's lamps illuminated their fur coats. Those weren't regular run-of-the-mill stray dogs seeking scraps of meat, or even love after escaping someone's home.

Those were _wolves_. Three had been loitering outside of the carriage in Budapest when she went to the convent to collect Jonathan. She had waited until they fled thanks to a nun’s intervention before she could exit the vehicle. She would swear to it that these were of the exact breed. What were they doing so close to the house, or even here in this part of England? Mina wondered as she closed the curtains and shivered. She turned back to Jonathan, half expecting him to have used her distraction to try to get up again.

Instead, he was sound asleep--a natural one, even--and curled up half around the pillow, and half with his leg over her own pillow in this rather unique sprawl. It was evident he wished the bed to be his and his alone tonight, she thought with a smile. She would oblige him that in his illness, for to do otherwise would be cruel and heartless. 

Mina smiled, and kissed his temple. He sighed, as though finally relieved of some dire burden when she gently brushed his hair from his face. She covered him up as best she could and left the pillows on the bed to him.

She would keep watch for what little night remained. She would keep watch as long as he was unlike himself.  
\--

Another day had passed. Another night was beginning. Jonathan had awakened sporadically throughout the day, but was grumpy about the sunlight until Mina finally pulled the curtains shut again. He had then fallen so soundly asleep that no sound she made could have ever disturbed him. 

He was reviving with the setting of the sun. She knew he could potentially re-enter that strangely nocturnal state when his wanderings became more important to him than his own safety. She felt she was ready, having taken a few cat naps by the window in her chair from time to time, when he was sleeping so deeply.

Mina, however, suddenly heard a commotion from _downstairs_. Something was slamming against the door. Was there a visitor? Was there danger? It sounded like a shout, mixed with howling. It sounded like something moved from slamming the front door to a wall further down the side. She couldn’t precisely see that part of the house from this window, so she carefully went to leave the room.

She took care to lock Jonathan inside before she left, so that he wouldn’t incur further injury to himself. If something happened to her, what would become of him? She knew he couldn’t fend off an attacker.

In truth, neither could she. She picked up the scissors, and a particularly long and sharp metal knitting needle before she left.

Let these be her weapons if a prowler sought to take her unawares.

As Mina left, Jonathan saw burning eyes in the window. He felt his lethargy grow worse; his arms felt weighted with lead, and an eager need stirred in his chest. **_‘Let me in,_** ’ a voice whispered through his mind. It was impossible to resist. “Come in, Lucy,” Jonathan heard himself begin to whisper languorously, even as his eyes fluttered shut again. He was so tired, but he knew he must stay awake in her presence. 

They _needed_ each other.

When he forced them open again, he smiled as he caught sight of the woman herself; her white face was bending over him, those long, sharp teeth pressed against her lower lip as she stared down at him. The room was filled with a white haze of mist. He was supposed to give a shout to Mina if something felt wrong and he required anything, but he knew this wasn’t to be mentioned. He couldn’t deny the woman before him. Quietly, he turned his face away, as he felt that she desired better access to his throat.

He felt teeth press into sensitive flesh, and remembered a similar occurrence. Whatever it stemmed from, the memory was incomplete. It had been like this previous evenings before he was too weak to leave his bed at night. He gasped as the sharp pain came. As he began to swoon, he felt Lucy breathily laugh near his ear. No, he sensed. She wanted him to focus on her, and fight back the natural inclination.

“ _Your_ taste comes now, my sweet Jonathan.” He stared blankly thanks to her power, and she prompted him. “Oh, _do_ drink it this time! We were interrupted before. Open wide, there’s a good boy,” Lucy cooed. Jonathan did, eyes now closing in languorous bliss. He swallowed the blood from a cut in her arm; Lucy wiped away the excess so that it wasn’t noticeable, even as he seemed to think she might order him to take a second taste.

She even wiped his chin. Lucy leaned closer, as though she only wanted to tell him a secret. “You and he are bound so tightly. Isn’t that right? I’d like you to feel me as much as you do him,” she whispered before she kissed his cheek. Jonathan slowly nodded, but she would wager he didn’t fully know what was happening.

“Tomorrow night, then?” Jonathan murmured. Despite his weakness, he would be pleased if she said yes. He felt almost drunk, or like he was straddling two realities. His throat burned from the taste, but it wasn’t wholly unpleasant. 

Lucy’s grin when it came was vicious. “No; it shall be tonight. _You_ will be strong enough to come to _us_ , when I call,” Lucy promised. Her blood would work wonders inside this man once it had had time to settle in. He would hear her voice as though he was standing beside her, or as though she was situated inside his soul.

She stroked his chest. When she closed her eyes, she could easily see through his. She could feel every sinew and bone throughout his body. She could feel his heart racing to compensate for the lack of blood. He would feel the radiance of her presence, and be drawn like a moth to a flame. He desired to rise and take her as a result of her ministrations, though he would never remember that as more than a fantasy. She opened her eyes again, and continued to speak to him in a low, and seductive tone.

“You can let _him_ in, then. I can see through you. I know that you want him in my place. Don’t think I don’t,” she playfully noted. His mind was her playground. She knew all that he was, and could shape him as she pleased. He couldn’t hide anything from her. “If you can leave the bed, I will lend you my strength to run and hide from anyone that keeps you from us.”

She saw a fleeting happiness in Jonathan’s eyes, and was satisfied. 

“Yes,” Jonathan agreed. “Of course that would be grand.” He was weak, and while his mouth and veins had briefly burned he was calmer now. He was placid as he watched her face change until she was merely the atoms that composed a larger mist. All of it seeped backwards through the almost unnoticeable crack between the window and the sill.

He fell unconscious against the pillow, then, and only woke with a start when Mina began frantically shaking his arm. He blinked owlishly up at her, and felt worse than he had earlier. He had lost all memory of the encounter. “Mina?” He rasped.

“Oh, thank God,” Mina replied as she sagged in relief. She took a moment to collect herself. “I thought you were dead, for you were paler than when I left the room!”

“I’m so tired,” Jonathan replied, almost to himself. “I had a funny dream with a voluptuous personage, but it’s gone away. I’m thirsty.” He didn’t want the water, but some part of him knew it must do for tonight. She helped him to sit up so that he could drink it without choking.

“Sleep, Jonathan,” Mina soothed when he finished and she had taken away the glass. “I will stay here." The sound had proven to be nothing. She had looked out the downstairs window, and known it could not be the wind. It must remain a mystery until morning.

What was it? She had seen the paw prints of a large hound, but no destruction. Perhaps she would never know. If there were phosphorescent paint on the patio, she would suspect someone who had read a few too many Sherlock Holmes stories was playing a mean trick.

After several minutes, there came a gentle snuffle that would have made her laugh at any other time for how it intruded upon her thoughts. The clock ticked steadily. Jonathan’s eyes were worried when they opened, and she shushed him before he could speak.

“Go back to sleep, and gain a true rest. Then, we’ll talk,” she suggested when she saw how bruised the bags beneath his eyes were. They could talk about the journal afterwards. There was time, wasn’t there?

Mina leaned back with a sigh in the chair. She had made several moves to read it during the course of the day, only to be interrupted by visitors and mourners there to speak of Mr. Hawkins. Some people had been unable to make an appearance at the funeral, but had given her many fruit baskets and offered to help her with anything.

Jonathan felt torn, and raw inside his head as something of himself bubbled to the surface the next time he awoke, three hours later. He felt like he had slept for a year when he lifted his head. He looked at Mina, wide-eyed, and knew he must have said something shocking. No, he was wrong, wasn’t he? She was only worried for his sake.

Each night it was the same, and it terrified him. Each night, it was far too reminiscent of the loss of control, which went hand-in-hand with brain fever. He went back and forth without warning or just cause, longing to go into that state against all his good intentions. At the same time, he hated it.

It was always worse at night. It felt like his mind was hazy, until something was torn free. 

He just couldn’t remember what he said or did in that particular state of being. He only remembered falling into a deep sleep, which didn’t feel normal, even at his sickest. He sighed, reaching up to feel the pillow, for he hadn’t the strength for much more at this juncture. He wanted to sit up, but his limbs felt heavy. “I…I feel like Mr. Hawkins would be able to force me up with but a stern eye, as he did when I fell behind as a child,” Jonathan whispered. “I shouldn’t be like this. I would and should most assuredly ignore a little thing like this, so that I might see to my clients and their needs.”

“Jonathan, tell me the truth,” Mina began once he seemed coherent. He did seem brighter tonight, even if he was too tired to do much physically. “Does this feel as though it is a relapse? Does this feel like what occurred abroad?” She hadn’t any experience with brain fever, aside from the results upon recovery. 

Jonathan strove to answer truthfully, to the best of his ability. He feared it would stir something loose if he spoke of it. He feared being overtaken. “No,” Jonathan said in a clipped tone, before he sighed. He rubbed his eyes. How could he explain that time? He barely recalled much, except the very start of it, and the ending. 

“I was frantic when I did have it. I was—angry and in a hurry and scared…and seeing things that were not there as it all fell apart inside my head. Nothing was safe. Everyone had a secret, or a reason to hurt me. I _needed_ a ticket to the furthest station, that very instant, for that reason. I shouted more, though I was uncertain of my words. I wasn’t weak at the onset.” He paused, and his voice was shaking as he continued.

“I perceived there must certainly be a cruelty behind every platitude; there was evil in every gesture of consolation as others sought to calm me," he whispered in a quiet horror as he focused on the past. "I _knew_ that I couldn’t even trust _myself_ , and I didn’t know _why_. It didn’t seem like paranoia, but as though the blinders had been pulled aside for one brief and terrifying moment.”

He remembered such evil impressions, between flickers of reason.

Mina moved to urge him to stop talking if this would make it worse for him, but stopped when he held up his hand.

Jonathan shook his head once. “Don’t interrupt, or I won’t be able to get it all out into the open between us. You’ve asked. You’ve opened the floodgates, as it were, my dear Mina.” The chiding humor faded as he settled back into what could be recalled from those times. The words had been gentle, but the description would not be. “I—it was raining blood, and there were wolves howling that weren’t there, and blue flames burning everywhere.”

He grimaced. “There was blood pouring from the walls; it wasn’t just pouring the horror when I was outdoors. I…I thought it would get on the nuns. I thought it would hurt them, for such imagery must certainly be sinful when it is unnatural. And I was certain of falling as though from a great height, before something with claws tore me apart from the inside. Something was burning in my throat; it was something I drank, and it was repellant.” He took a breath, and shuddered. “There were ungodly women...devils of the pit watching me through the windows every night, waiting for me to come outside and frolic among them.”

The recollection was so vivid tonight.

“There were neither bats nor wolves waiting for me behind every door, but I believed that there were. That’s all I’ll say of those delusions, for the rest of my days.” His voice was steely by the end, for he had successfully forced it to stop shaking. He covered his face for the barest moment before he felt ready to confront his wife again. His greatest wish was that they not dwell on it. “I haven’t seen ghosts. I haven’t seen demons. I _have_ seen _something_ , but it is locked up tight when it comes to particular matters, Mina. I didn’t hear voices calling for me when I had brain fever." 

No, that was a lie. He had heard them. He had seen someone, much as he didn’t wish to admit it to himself. There was a man, but his face was a blur. He forced himself to continue and not fill her head with untruths. "I did not often hear voices, though I heard laughter.” He thought he heard it again, and strove not to react. He sensed something was coming.

Whatever the something was, it was inside of _him_ these days. It lingered even now, and sought his attention. 

That was the only way he could tell her that he did hear the voices now, aside from a particular slip prior. He was prevented the rest of the time, and felt little shame anymore. It felt keenly amusing to hide it now, since something had changed inside him. He knew he should be concerned about that, but it was shoved in the back of his mind. “I only feel drained and sore. I don’t know what happened to cause the last. Do you? Aside from the ropes that night? Should not that have passed?”

Mina was watching him sadly, as though she had always wondered what he hallucinated, but she had been afraid to ask until now. Even that insight into his mind’s state was something she wished to take away from him. He never should have suffered that. “I don’t know where you went or what became of you as you wandered in the wilderness, Jonathan, but it was not for the better. It only made you sicker,” Mina said at last.

She sighed. "You strained at the ropes to be free. I shouldn't wonder at the continual soreness." He did seem a bit better than previous nights. He was taking an active interest.

Their loss was so fresh, she saw, as he turned to gaze upon an old picture of Mr. Hawkins on the bureau. Now she answered his earlier comment. “He would watch you, and keep you safe. You know that. He might very well have held you to the bed with his cane, no matter his gout. What you require is rest.”

Jonathan nodded, for she was right in that regard. He wasn’t sure why he had even said it. Even as he thought that, something stirred in his head. Like every other time, he hadn’t the wherewithal to speak of these strange sensations that sent a soothing darkness across his mind and soul, and seemed to soothe the aching weakness in an instant. The hour was late, but he now heard the call. He knew he had someone he needed to see.

**_‘Come to us…’_ **

The summons was gaining in strength and he just couldn’t fight it anymore in his weakened state. Unlike previous nights, he wanted to go straight to their sides, and kiss them and let them take him in any way they pleased. The exquisite thought only made him quiver inside.

“Perhaps _I_ should sleep? No,” Jonathan said with a jaunty half smile, even as he stared intensely her way. “Perhaps _you_ should sleep, Mina. I slept the day away like a loaf! You have been up for so _very_ long, doting on me. Interfering with their plans.” What was going to happen on this night must happen. He saw it so clearly now. 

Mina knew he would only be impossible to rouse in the day. The one way he proved that he hadn’t slipped into some dreadful coma was when he stirred at night, and spoke of matters both like and unlike him. Though there was something off in both his tone and manner by the end. She hoped it wasn’t like earlier, with those red eyes. Would he even remember _that_? “Later.” Interfering in their plans? Whose plans?

“You will sleep soon, and all will be well for me. All will be well for us. You needn’t resist,” Jonathan continued with that expression still there. “You’ll never resist two. You won’t have time before they pull you under. They want me in attendance.” He could hear another—he could hear two voices echoing and looping through his thoughts, threading through him and changing him like he was but the eye of a needle and they were better at weaving him into something new than he was at pulling free.

He was him and another at the same time, and in the last seconds prior to the other gaining dominance, he had reviled it. As something else clutched and took hold of his way of thinking, he smiled. Their ways and their attitudes would be embraced without reservation.

As if in answer, Mina did feel as though her eyes were growing heavy. What was the matter with him? What was the matter with _her_? Why did he turn and stare out towards the window yet again, before he closed his eyes and nodded once? Was it because the fog had a peculiar red sheen to it tonight? Mina closed her own eyes for a second. She forced them open and found Jonathan had moved from reclining against a pillow to kneeling almost at the center of the bed, eyes hard and cold as he stared, unblinking and watchful.

Mina knew he would escape again; she had to get moving! If it were something more, she wasn’t certain what she could do. “Jonathan,” she breathed. “Fight this. Help me,” she added. She felt so tired that it had to be something wrong with her, too. “Something is the matter,” she insisted, as she grew dizzier by the second.

Jonathan slowly shook his head, and put a finger to his lips. She supposed if he were closer, he would be shushing her with a hand pressed over her mouth. “Shhh, Mina. Don’t fight them,” he said in a tone that was sickly sweet. “You’ll feel better if you don’t. They’ll make it _pleasurable_ someday when you go to them, too. She says that you must.”

Even his voice was strange, Mina thought as she stumbled backwards and sank into the chair. His voice was unnaturally seductive and almost velvety. As she lost focus, she saw her husband creeping across the length of the bed towards her, slowly, as though he was stalking her and waiting for his time to pounce.

It terrified her. Did he think he was someplace else? Did he think she was someone else? This wasn’t like him at all, in a heightened and more grotesque way than before. Had he ever behaved like this before the nuns? What would he do next? Her head lurched forward as sleep forcibly dragged her down, and bound her to her place. All worry and thought began to flee in the face of it.

Breathing slowly, Mina saw from the corner of her eye that Jonathan was practically vibrating from how enervated he appeared to be beneath that alien mask he had taken to wearing. It was not a mask; she corrected herself. It was a range of expressions that didn’t suit him, for they were a stranger’s; a manipulative stranger was looking out through his eyes.

This wasn’t Jonathan. This was such a contrast to how gravely ill and languid he had been in the days since this began. The volcanic energy that once went to satisfying clients to the best of his abilities was now redirected to unnatural ends, and surely must be making him ever sicker. This had to be caused by another’s will; another’s manipulations; another’s sick game. 

She saw him staring at her expectantly, with a hint of decadent amusement. She swallowed hard, trying to keep her eyes open. She failed.

Mina thought she heard a low, evil chuckle, and knew that was certainly someone else. Her Jonathan couldn’t sound like that.

He…couldn’t…

Jonathan sat back, satisfied. His benefactors had done as they had promised, so that he might go to them.

When Jonathan became like this, every sense was heightened. Everything felt simpler, and he listened to all that whispered in his mind. If he reciprocated, there would be no pain or doubt. His mind had but one goal as knowledge flooded into it that wasn’t his own. He must evade anyone that deterred him, foil them, and reach those who called for him. With each night that he was touched by them, his mind felt that much more unusual.

Less and less of it was left to feel like his old self, and he didn’t care as much for that. With each bite of those fangs, his resolve to remain as he had been lessened. Jonathan had tried, for Mina. By day, he was sleeping more, but he could answer what questions he could. He thought he was being honest. He thought he was telling everything that he felt. Now that this pull was yanking him about inside, those feelings faded.

He grasped the unconscious lies he had told, but no longer judged them to be wicked.

With a silent snarl of annoyance on his face, and feeling more like she was a stranger now that his two had provided for his well-being by knocking _her_ out, Jonathan crept closer. He must seize his chance to get out. As he watched Mina, so, too, did a sliver of his old self—his true self—emerge from behind this creature that grew in strength.

Even to do this, Jonathan recognized he could never hurt her. He would never do that. His eyes, which had hardened as something else consumed him, softened. He grasped his head as the command came again, louder from within and without, and knew he must listen. He _wanted_ to listen. Didn’t he? He must. As he shakily rose and began to pass her by, he stopped. The smirk beginning to form faded. He gathered the quilt from the floor, and put it around her shoulders. He smoothed it down so she wouldn’t be caught in anything. He bent closer; she wouldn’t awaken. 

He thought these could be his final minutes seeing her, and shuddered once, forcing himself to halt with the little he could control. Then, he leaned down and kissed her forehead, as he used to do in times gone by, when they were smaller and children, and still played silly games together. He had also kissed her like this following their marriage in the convent, for he had been too ill for the more strenuous and fulfilling activities befitting his status as a newly married man.

He could do no more, now, and the want to fight vanished like a candle abruptly blown out by the wind. 

As Jonathan made to leave the room, on the bureau he saw the crucifix given to him by the innkeeper’s wife, and a shudder passed through him. Why had he kept it? He hated the sight of it, when it had been a comfort in the castle; this rage didn’t belong to him. He weakly grasped his handkerchief once he located it in the pocket of a coat thrown over a chair. He wrapped it almost reverently around the holy object, without letting his bare skin touch it.

Everything was deterring him! He hated the sight of this. It must be done away with.

Then, glad that Mina could not stop him—for _he, his Master, and his Mistress_ had compelled her to sleep, as well as him to act—Jonathan unlatched the window and stared grimly outside. There was a gentle breeze; the red fog swayed this way and that almost aimlessly. He knew better. He flung the object out into the opposite direction, so that none would come to harm for a careless toss.

 _They_ would not have it used against them. It would be out of Mina’s reach. She hadn’t knowledge of their weakness, and that was the way it must remain. Jonathan still wished to be ready.

 ** _‘It is time to come to us.’_** Jonathan heard the words swooping into his mind like a great bat. He heard them even as he stood, swaying, above Mina’s unconscious form. His eyes, having grown dull and hard in equal measure as he removed that religious item, suddenly softened as he peered over to her again. 

She wanted him safe. He wanted the same when it came to her life. 

Jonathan left the room, and then caught his reflection in the hall mirror as he struggled to keep moving and not falter. His conscience was quiet until then, but the sight of his own appearance caused him to jolt backwards. Had he thought someone was confronting him? No. He was confused as to why he felt such a severe repulsion. Perhaps it was part and parcel of his becoming. This was why the Count had no mirrors in the castle, wasn’t it?

He would have thrown it to the floor and shattered it if he wasn’t afraid it would awaken Mina. Lucy's power was great, though raw for her newness. Could it hold Mina in the face of the sound of breaking glass? He took a step closer as he realized part of what had drawn his attention.

Jonathan’s canines were sharper. It was subtle, but it was there. He was being torn apart by twin mindsets inside. Guilt and fear wanted to come into being, but were suffocated in their cradle. He knew what he might lose; he should be scared; he should be disturbed. He should be frightened, and seeking aid. He might have, if not for a glee that was sprouting like a new seedling in the spring. There was an anticipatory yearning that was rooted so deeply inside him that it left him breathless and made his hands quake as he reached out to the glass.

Or was it the blood loss causing the shaking? He didn’t hate this change. He wanted to know more. He closed his eyes and shook his head with a grimace, shoving himself away from the damned fascination that could leave him cataloging the changes within him for the rest of the night. 

Those notions faded as he felt phantom touches across his soul start anew. He choked to contain himself, and keep silent. He heard voices carried on the breeze that suddenly penetrated the corridor. Or was the breeze only in his mind? He didn’t know anymore, but it felt chilly. His eyes burned, but it wasn’t tears in them. He didn’t dare look back at his reflection, for he knew he must look like a demon.

Or would his reflection be gone, like a fading dream?

What would Mina have thought? Would she have held him tight, so that he could not go to them? Would she have kept to that promise of earlier, believing he still wished to stay as _himself_? He needed the ones outside. It hurt to resist. He must heed their call; it was so seductive that he could have wept at the truth of its beauty.

He walked quickly onward and down the staircase. Mina and the old life were swiftly forgotten. He felt an energy that did not originate from him, aiding him in leaving. It allowed him to walk under his own power, rather than slowly crawl through the house. Such a manner of locomotion would have seen their plans foiled. Such would never do for them.

Go to them! Do so now, and his blood would no longer feel as though it burned through his veins.

Go to them! He would have no more blood to give, and it would all be over.

Jonathan smiled.

He glanced over his shoulder, almost uncertain before it faded. **_‘Do you not want her, too, my lady? Would she not fulfill your ends?’_** Jonathan thought back to them. He wasn’t sure how he managed it, but it was something that just happened when they were inside his thoughts with him.

The emotional heat of the woman’s reply almost made him collapse in shock and dissolve into laughter, but he hurried onward and threw the door open wide. His blushes would have grown with those feelings that carried through, as hot as a furnace, but he was so cold. He had little blood left, and it was meant for those two. 

He was standing in the center of the fog, which had ceased to be the color of blood. He sensed the approach of another, and felt no fear. Without looking, he knew that hands were reaching for him. With unerring accuracy, he knew the direction from which they came.

Suddenly, he felt powerless. He could stand no longer; his legs felt like jelly. He staggered a few more steps, before he was falling to his knees in the grass. He must wait here. He blinked, feeling his mind go quiet. The roiling desires within him ceased. He waited, and that was all. A very cold hand suddenly touched his throat, tilting his chin up. Jonathan smiled as he locked eyes on the one before him.

“Lucy,” he whispered with joy as he was pulled to his feet. Her arms wrapped around him, just like when she had tried to teach him how to dance in secret, in the woods, away from the servants. He had never even told Mina that he was but a gangly teenager and it was his first kiss after stomping her toes, but he guessed she still knew. He had planned to use that awkward instruction for the first dance after their wedding, but, in his weakened state, there hadn’t been a chance for him to do such at the convent. 

He smiled, lost in the red of her eyes. 

“You missed a night, sweet Jonathan, so we will catch up,” Lucy seductively whispered into his ear. Was it his imagination or was her voice different? Did it matter? No, he knew. It didn’t. Jonathan only nodded mindlessly, leaning against her as he felt himself drifting. A touch of blood was suddenly against his lips, and he opened his mouth, just as obediently as before; it had the effect of some form of narcotic. He smiled pleasantly following the taste, no longer paying it any mind as she bit him.

Her voice echoed through his soul, setting it alight. He felt himself tiring faster, before she removed her mouth. He weakly stretched his arm out for her as she stepped away, afraid he would fall without her presence. He continued to stand, but not by his own choice. Another set of fangs bit into him on the opposite side, while his eyes were locked on Lucy’s.

This mouth did not take so much as Lucy had.

Then, he felt a male hand first clutch his shoulder hard enough to bruise, followed by hers at his elbow, as though from far away. The first turned him to face him. Jonathan blinked owlishly, numb to almost everything, and struggling to care.

When it finally connected who was before him, and he was alert enough to know, Jonathan smiled again, brighter than before, just before he looked down. He had once feared this man; he couldn’t recall why anymore. He said the only thing that could fall from his lips in this state, voice creaky at first. He was wobbly, but held up, bolstered by the strength of the man himself. “London…agrees with you, sir,” he pleasantly stated, as he looked him in the eyes.

There was no fear from Jonathan.

The Count chuckled at the statement, for it was unexpected. “Do you wish to finish this tonight…or tomorrow night, my young friend? You have but one hour before your heart stops, if we should choose the former.” His lips bent low to kiss away the blood that still seeped from Lucy’s bite. Jonathan was almost overcome, and clutched his arm weakly.

Were this any other soul, and if this were not a part of the Count's grander scheme, those veins would have been ripped from their moorings.

“Tonight…indoors…please,” Jonathan begged quietly. Some part of him desired to say goodbye. Mostly, it was too cold for him right at this instant. Some part of him wished for the comfort of his own bed. Knowledge of what to do was delivered to him. He slowly nodded in a daze. He remembered the exact words spoken to him not so long ago, before everything had changed. 

It was a choice, wasn’t it? Just as he had entered the castle, he must choose to walk through this path to its very end. Though his mind was disjointed, it had been made once. It would be made again.

Jonathan licked his lips, still tasting that residual iron tang of blood. His lashes fluttered, for he was at the brink of fainting. He felt another’s will rule his own, and give him the ability to force out the words. “Enter…freely and—of your own will, my dear Count.” The strength of those hands was abruptly lost to him; they let go as he began to hear Mina shouting his name. It was dull, and muffled.

It still began to break through the trance that had stolen his identity away. He was suddenly alone in the fog. Then, there was no more fog, or not as much; no hands were touching him lightly with claws at their fingertips. Jonathan felt like he was waking up from a dream. 

He felt as though he was becoming that other, duller soul again. He would be that man who dreaded the castle’s beauty again, wouldn’t he?

_**‘Thank you, my young friend. I will deliver you unto death presently, but for now, for a time, you shall forget and be what you think of as your true self. But we both know better, do we not?’** _

“Yes,” Jonathan softly laughed, still midway between one mindset and the other. He held himself, quivering momentarily with a manic joy at the Count’s declaration. A larger portion than he would care to admit in the daylight was eager to find itself within a coffin.

He couldn’t control what he murmured in his weakness, and hoped he gave nothing too sordid away to Mina’s ears when she found him. He was already forgetting why he was outside. 

A smile of contentment wreathed his face as he felt himself falling.


	3. Chapter 3

Mina awoke with a gasp. Jonathan was gone, and she was wrapped in a quilt; it fell to the floor even as she rose to her feet, briefly swaying as though she were drunk. As she struggled to think, she gathered the quilt and put it in her chair. The bed was empty, though she felt like mere moments had passed until she looked at the clock. Half an hour had passed? And how many of those minutes were spent with him out possibly getting harmed due to an altered state of consciousness?

In a rush, she grabbed the lantern of before where it sat on a table, lit it with unsteady hands, and made for the staircase. She plowed headlong into the fog, not knowing which way to turn. She stumbled over the root of a tree, but caught herself.

“The book of night was opened wide,” Lucy’s voice suddenly whispered in her ear. Mina jumped with a thrill of disbelief. This wasn’t a dream! Where was she? She turned in every direction, but could not find her in the accursed fog. 

What book of night? Mina wondered, not for the first time. Yes, of course! _The Dream_. She had had a chance to think in the nights since her own dream. The line was thus. ‘To him the book of night was opened wide, and voices from the deep abyss revealed. A marvel and a secret.’ Perhaps this was Lucy’s way of saying she was truly here. This was no dream. This was no vision. This was no delusion. She should draw her close and they could write their own story together.

Lucy was a marvel and somehow the secret!

Lucy was no longer ill, but if she was the cause of all of this, Mina knew that she was not a spirit, either. If she was present, she could not be dead, like her dream self had so feared. This was a physical being, which could touch her and interact with the world in other ways. What was she? _Where_ was she? In this hour, she wondered why what she was didn’t matter. It never mattered. Lucy was somewhere close. Did the origin of this gift matter? Suddenly, the red eyes returned in the mist, and she felt as though she were being soothed.

This should scare her. It didn’t. Their time was now, was it not? The book of night? Let it open. She thought there was a hand reaching for her face, just as it had in the dream.

Suddenly, it vanished, and the eyes with it. Mina came back to herself with a start, and felt only confusion. A sense of comfort was torn from her. She remembered why she had come out here, and spied the lantern. Where _was_ Jonathan, for that matter? She had come to collect him. She was fretting he had come to further harm.

Mina heard a moan, then, and sat down the lantern as she crept closer. The mist parted. It was Jonathan, just as he sounded during dreams he refused to discuss with her.

The scene cleared fully just as he managed to climb to one knee. One hand gripped the grass to the point that his palm would surely be stained when it was released. He looked at Mina as one did when they did not know if they were asleep or awake. “His red eyes again,” Jonathan murmured, almost to himself. “Her shadow, but his eyes.”

He began to rise, only to slip. Jonathan found himself kneeling on his hands and knees, mind going in and out of consciousness before he felt Mina’s hands beneath his arms, steadying him.

“Who do you mean?” Mina wondered. What was happening?

“I don’t know,” he hesitantly replied as he just focused on breathing. His heart was pounding in a manner that made him fear he would die. He was starting to become more alert, but it was difficult to stay awake. He swayed, and would have fallen face down into the lawn if Mina had not caught him by the shoulders. She steadied herself against a nearby tree, before she moved one of his arms over her shoulder as they made to stand. 

Mina found amusement, then, in these strange times, and smiled at a terrible memory. “You didn’t wander for miles, without shoes, in the mud, Jonathan.”

“Good,” Jonathan replied, uncertain how else to respond. This was far enough. He had an odd smile as he touched his throat. If pressed, he couldn’t fathom why. He was still only in shouting distance of the house, he surmised. “They didn’t take enough,” he stated, more dazed than not. 

If Mina didn’t know better, she believed that she had detected the undercurrent of a malicious outrage before it faded from him. A content smile returned moments later, before he grimaced and clutched his head. Whatever he was struggling against, he temporarily lost the battle.

“It was the man himself,” he whispered. His voice was weak, but gradually sounding sharper, though there was an edge to it. “Younger. Much more…refined, and dashing, if I might say so. His…his touch was the same. _He_ was the same. His red eyes…the same strong voice commanding armies, was inside my head. So bright…so bright…” Jonathan swayed, and would have collapsed if not for her. 

“I still don’t know what I mean,” Jonathan muttered before she could ask. “I wonder if I ever will.” The memories were coming and going, flickering out of existence whenever he tried to understand. He wondered if he was relapsing. It was as though he was standing outside of his body, and watching someone else speaking through him. He couldn’t possibly describe such an ordeal without sounding utterly out of his mind.

Mina managed to lead him the rest of the way inside in silence. 

Once indoors, he began carefully walking without her to bolster him. She allowed him that, until she realized he had stopped and not sat down after all. She looked at him curiously; he was gazing out the window, palms on the glass, and face pressed close to see something. She neared, and saw a dark grin cross his face, which startled her. He nodded once, and seemed to be listening to something only he could hear. His eyes suddenly cleared, and he would have collapsed to the floor if she hadn’t pushed him to the chair.

She tugged his arm, so he would come along with her, but instead he froze and turned away once he regained his footing. Mina looked through a steamed up bit of glass. She saw eyes coalesce as though connected to no face. The fog only allowed those twin specks of light to be revealed to her, as bright as the fires of Hell. Or like a fire to light his way, she could not say. She gasped. Her teachings made her immediately suspect that if it were not a vision of the pit, it could only be something frightful.

What were they up against? 

She wondered if she was overreacting, but she wanted to break the spell it had placed on Jonathan. Her hand fell on his back. He shivered beneath her fingers; at first she thought it was fear, but she soon learned the truth. It sounded to her ears like he emitted a low chuckle; it was like it was a revelation he had expected all night, and now he had no reason to fear this image.

For Jonathan, when he focused in the middle of the fog beyond the house, he saw glowing red eyes. He felt that something stirred inside his head. He should know who it was, where it was, and he felt the continuing impulse to follow that cloaked figure wherever it must lead. Nearby howls suddenly startled him from his thoughts. 

They were the howls of dogs, not wolves; he mustn’t heed them. 

Someone was calling his name, pulling him through his mind. He heard Mina, and decided she was calling him the loudest. He saw red eyes, even when they faded from view outside the window. He closed his own, and squeezed them tighter as he began to shake his head. He could see them even there. 

He moaned, confused. Then, it felt like he wanted to step out of himself, and run to join them. That could not be possible. He heard himself as he laughed low again, fingers hovering just above where they had been before. He tensed as he felt Mina again. “I will listen soon enough,” he promised, that darker piece of him drinking in every instruction he was given, before it was promptly lost to his conscious mind.

“Jonathan Harker, stop this!” He didn’t reply, so she grabbed him. “Wake up!” Mina must have taken him unawares, or she could never have spun him to face her. He strained to turn back, and keep looking. There was that light in his eyes again. When it vanished, he went limp in her grasp. She carefully let go, though she remained cautious; he staggered before catching himself on the sofa, and her arm. 

She aided him in seating himself, though he looked around like he wasn’t aware of his actions at the window, or how he had come to be there. His breath came in heaving gasps until he steadied himself and leaned back; she knew he was ill, and drained, and needed to rest. She knew it was not a natural ailment, though it extended to this physical state. She knew she would protect him and bargain with the devil himself if it came to that. She believed that she had already faced him once, through Jonathan. 

She might even walk through the fiery gates at the maw of Hell if it came to that.

It was a silly idea, but it was taking root. Perhaps it was melodramatic. Perhaps it was foolish. It wheedled itself into her psyche, and the idea wouldn’t let go. She loved him and would defend him.

She moved slowly to let go of Jonathan, and knelt beside his seat. She touched his hand. Only when she had his attention did she move. She reached for the table, and opened the drawer with her key. As she reached in, she glanced over to lock eyes with him, so that she would know that he understood this gesture. She had placed this here during the day. 

She was serious when she spoke to him, as she held up the journal so carefully wrapped in white paper, knotted tightly with blue ribbon, and sealed in wax with the impression of their wedding ring.

He understood, even as his own fingers brushed it. She hadn’t opened it; just as she promised. Not on the first night he had wandered, nor on the second. “I must read this,” she explained. Her voice had the tone of one who would not be swayed on this matter. 

Jonathan saw the seriousness of her manner. He knew her best, and understood her worry for him. It went both ways, and he knew how tiring it must be to keep an eye on him each evening, and see to his well being when he hated being confined the instant the sun neared the horizon. “Yes,” Jonathan agreed. “You should, Wilhelmina,” he said, as his own voice broke. He didn’t grasp the night’s events, but knew he was weaker this time. He felt sicker, yet he also had a sense of exuberance buried beneath it all. 

He swallowed. When he touched his throat, his fingers came back with drying blood. Was there more on the other side? Hadn’t that blood been on the opposite side last night? He dizzily wondered. This was becoming a habit. “I can’t. I must get to bed first,” he added hazily. He checked the other side, and found he was correct about the location of blood. That side was just as wet.

“Of course you should, Jonathan. I wouldn’t leave you down here,” Mina agreed as she aided him in rising. She would find him a towel for his hands, and more bandages for his throat.

While Jonathan gave her a brave smile, it was fleeting, and he knew better than to deny that he needed help. “It is not my intention to worry you,” he began, even as his voice broke. Her expression silenced him, for the words were neither needed nor necessary. He could sense a great knowledge of what was wrong with him gnawing at the back of his mind, but it was beyond his grasp at this juncture. A greater piece of him wanted to just forget and let it happen; rush into the night.

The siren’s call was too sweet, too beautiful, too enticing of a lure to him, he had gathered as the confusion parted for the briefest of instants. Jonathan didn’t want to cause Mina further pain. Guilt weighed heavily on his heart. He would not abandon her. She was his truest friend. Despite everything, she had not turned from him.

Let her read his private thoughts, he decided as they took each step carefully up the staircase. Let them uncover the mysteries concealed even from himself; she would let him know what he was keeping from them both after he rested. He trusted her with both his life and his sanity, as well as with his soul. She would always have his trust. “Did…I say anything uncouth, Mina?” He asked at the doorway. He leaned on the wall for support as she moved to open the door wider.

Mina clasped his hand tightly and helped him sit down when they entered the room. In truth, she aided him in falling onto a softer surface than the floor. “You said several things. They were not your words,” Mina replied as she straightened the covers. In his haste to escape the premises, she was surprised he hadn’t become tangled in the linen and fallen. He was so weak now. Why was he stronger like that?

They gave themselves a few moments of peace, as wounds were bandaged on his throat. While he seated himself at the edge of the bed, the blood was delicately wiped away as best it could be without harming him.

“There was…s-something else here…tonight,” Jonathan weakly murmured, as he tried to catch his breath. “I was lost. I…didn’t rave as I must have….before, and I _know_ that,” he added, distraught and struggling to force out the words. He gazed into her eyes. “I spoke to someone. It is there and shall not be shaken loose. I couldn’t have raved,” he repeated. “You wouldn’t look so if I had. I was so lost, and tucked away inside my head. I wasn’t myself. I wanted something that goes against my nature.”

He shook his head, for it wasn’t fully that in places. “I...was lost, and could not find myself,” he said as his voice broke. Losing himself at all, losing time, losing his mind were terrors that could not be surpassed for him.

“Know this, Jonathan Harker. I will always find you,” Mina promised, as she lifted his face so he would not turn away. She wouldn’t question the last, if it pained him to say so much. She saw a man so frustrated at the lack of answers that he was at the brink of sobbing. 

“In Heaven or in Hell, I will find you. If you are lost, I will find you, for the love of our friendship if you can hold tight to nothing else. I did in Budapest. I did tonight,” she said with tears in her eyes. Jonathan may have been in no shape for walking, but he could still get lost in his mind and his worries and his wishes. He could still be taken from her by whatever that creature was that used his mouth.

He might have the strength of water, but he managed to lean forward and embrace her with shaking arms. He hadn’t the energy for more.

Jonathan swallowed. “And I—shall endeavor…to do the same, if I am able, Wilhelmina Harker. Should you yourself grow lost or afraid,” he swore. “Should you yourself become trapped in some dark land, I will follow.” He sighed as he held her as tight as he could. “As best as I can. Let these be our new holy vows, then.” 

“In this life, or in our next one,” he vowed in a different tone, suddenly, while his face was hidden from her against her shoulder.

Mina wondered about the phrasing. It was the thought behind most of that that counted. However, there was an almost appalling eagerness in the last words that felt akin to that stranger he had been before he had bolted earlier. The weaker, sweet vows were all Jonathan. 

She would cling to that. Jonathan was there, deep down. He was still with her. He still loved her. She only desired to see to his protection and safety.

Before she left his side, Jonathan felt like a child awaiting a punishment he didn’t deserve; Mina rubbed his arm, even as he continued and confirmed his state of mind. “Please do not judge me too harshly, Mina. Whatever I’ve said and done in those pages. Please?”

Mina said nothing more, and merely leaned her head against his. He leaned against hers, holding in tears. Their friendship would carry them through the midnight hour, and beyond. Even if nothing else could, even if he had done something dreadful, she knew he must certainly have suffered enough over it. Even if he didn’t remember, he had been through enough. “Six weeks of torment in that convent was enough for one soul, Jonathan. Don’t extend it.”

Jonathan was stunned by how much love shone from her eyes. He almost felt he didn’t deserve her. He opened his mouth to say more, but only made it so far as, “Mina…”

Mina stopped him with a finger to his lips and a small shake of her head. “Rest,” she whispered. “I will do the worrying for both of us. I know it’s time to read it, but you need time to heal.” She saw the relief as he nodded. She kissed his temple and moved to turn down the lamp again. “I’ll read it where there’s more light. Shout when you feel you are being tempted.”

“This wasn’t the first time. When I was abroad, there was something,” Jonathan whispered as he crawled under the covers and let his head fall onto the pillow. “I felt something on my throat before, but I was never allowed a mirror.” He blinked, for he had recalled that much. “I don’t know what it means. I don’t know why I’m not afraid of that, Mina. I don’t know why it feels right.”

Mina gave him a shaky smile in the encroaching gloom, before she closed the door. “We’ll find out.” 

Doubts would consume them if they let them, she had realized. As she sat down with his journal in her hands and tore the ribbon loose, she resolved to let the facts be their guide through these uncharted waters. Let the facts guide them through the underworld, as Orpheus had once done for Eurydice.

Mina shuddered as she recalled how such an innocent look behind Orpheus had parted the lovers for eternity.

Looking through these pages…such a simple view into the chronicles of her husband’s past and accompanying mental state shouldn’t feel so grim or laden with doom.

Despite that feeling, she began to read.


	4. Chapter 4

Mina was engrossed in the pages of Jonathan’s journal, and little could distract her. Once she managed to page through the memos for meals she must remember to learn how to cook for Jonathan (and marveled at his faith in her cooking skills) she reached the parts she had dreaded the most. Contrary to his note, his yearning for those three did not truly cause her pain.

The consequences to his journey extended even here, in England. That spell he was under and those feelings that were conjured by three demonic women sounded like her dream of earlier. “The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them,” she whispered even as she read further still. Such was the appearance of Jonathan’s eyes earlier.

She knew the description of this Count Dracula.

_‘Then the horror overcame me, and I sank down unconscious.’_

“Oh, what happened to you after you closed your eyes, Jonathan? What could they have done to you?” Mina wondered, almost distraught. What had passed between that swoon, and when he found himself in his bed? 

Mina had yet to conclude the horror that dwelled within the pages. There was the Count’s intrusion, whereupon he had saved Jonathan from being bitten by those women. There was the knowledge of time passing, and the watch not wound as was his wont.

Before she could steel herself to continue, she heard a scratching sound at the glass. She looked up, and started. Through the mist, she believed she had detected the presence of Lucy’s face. That was impossible! She leapt to her feet, but there was nobody there by the time she reached it. 

Had anyone ever been there?

She wasn’t certain if it was the mood set by reading the journal, coupled with her nerves and little sleep, or a genuine visit from her friend…who shouldn’t be looking in at her from the second floor.

Then, there came a quick cry. Jonathan! Mina moved quickly, taking care to avoid anything that might give away the fact she was rushing to him.

She couldn’t make too much noise. If Jonathan was only in the midst of a night terror, she mustn’t spin him further into frayed nerves with a sudden screech of the floorboard. In his current state, it could stop his heart.

She opened the door, and gasped at the tableau. Jonathan was upright in bed, but was not alone in the room. The man she now knew must certainly be the Count was standing at the head of it, while her Jonathan stared up at him. He was exactly as Jonathan had described, aside from having grown younger. She found she still clutched the journal to her chest like a shield. 

That was no scream of fear, she soon learned; it was a cry of joy, quickly muffled by his very own hands.

Jonathan, with a smile of rapture, was seated again at the edge of the bed. The man in black reached down, stroking his knuckles down the side of Jonathan's cheek. Rather than recoil, Jonathan closed his eyes and leaned into the touch as though it was second nature.

This man was expected.

Perhaps it _was_ second nature for whatever had blossomed inside him, in some strange manner, Mina mused. It had to be if this man was behind Jonathan's changes. If the changes were so deeply embedded that there was no turning back, was it wrong to keep them separated? She was shaken by that thought.

She was meeting the infamous and mighty Count Dracula from all that she had read. While he could command the wolves and his demonic wives, and he could drive a man to the bosom of brain fever when it was the only recourse from his suffering, she _would not_ stand down.

“How did you gain entrance?” Mina softly wondered. Were there not rules? How had he broken this one?

For wasn’t that what he was? _Strigoi_? Or was the correct word _nosferatu_ , as the villagers had so warned Jonathan? She only knew it meant the drinker of blood, from Jonathan’s translation. What was the proper term for them?

"You will invite her inside _next_ , my friend," the Count intoned, providing only a smirk Mina's way to acknowledge her presence. There was her answer. He was unfazed. “Soon to be my creature,” he added in a lower tone. Jonathan only nodded once, and looked towards the window before the vampire continued. “My invitation came when you were asleep and he wandered through the night, hapless and docile as a lamb.”

Mina’s eyes grew wider. The journal was forgotten as it fell from nerveless fingers, but not the man she was anxious to protect. That feeling grew. There was fog billowing and swirling outside the glass as the window was opened. It curled around Jonathan's face. The fog didn't shock her, for there was always fog somewhere. 

It was London, after all. Exeter was as foggy as its heart.

It was Lucy who was revealed. It was Lucy, staring into her eyes, as she stared into the room. It was Lucy, and certainly no wild imaginings or a dream that elicited fondness and longing this time. It was not a mirage when she was reading, then, before the cry.

This was no fantasy.

Mina took a step towards her, covering her mouth, before she halted. She didn’t dare put a halt to the proceedings, for she wanted Lucy inside, too.

Jonathan rose on unsteady legs without a word of protest, before he turned back. “Hers came when Mina was distracted. You were with us only later; she came early, with her blood,” he quietly revealed to the Count. The vampire looked pleased, but let this play out. 

Jonathan must still give a proper welcome. He reached the window and leaned against the sill, trying to get a moment to steady himself. With shaking hands, he unlatched it and managed to get it open after his strength almost failed him. He leaned out with a kindly smile, baring his throat without fear.

Just before he turned away, Mina saw the blankness in his eyes; just as before, there was that flicker of red in the center before he looked more natural. The placid expression had vanished by the time she saw his eyes again. 

"Hello, Lucy. Won't you do as he did? Enter freely and of your own will; we want nothing more than your happiness, above all. It won’t be a secret this time; it will be proper, my lady," he entreated as he extended his hand. Chivalrously, despite his own weakness, he would assist her in her entrance into his home.

Lucy entered gracefully and noiselessly before she let go of his hand; while she didn’t require assistance, the offer both amused and thrilled her. Her eyes were gleaming in victory as she quickly kissed the man. "You were always so sweet, Jonathan. Ever the gentleman." She turned her attention to the marks on one side of his neck. These were the ones she had left, while those at the opposite side were his and his alone. She smiled fondly, for his taste had been splendid. A fondness remained for him, as he kissed her cheek.

When Jonathan leaned closer, the Count shook his head once, to Lucy's disappointment. No. Not another step; not another bite.

Mina realized that Jonathan was meant solely for him. It had been declared as such in his journal. What could she possibly do?

"Sit where you were, Jonathan; don't take a tumble," Lucy bid him, more out of habit than real concern. She knew they had weakened him considerably, and spotted him slowly beginning to sag. Jonathan obeyed, taking care as he propped himself up on the way back with both the table and Mina's arm when he got close enough. 

Mina wouldn't let him fall, even if she was out of her element.

Enter freely. The still silent Mina recognized the words from the journal once her heart stopped trying to pound its way out of her chest. She made certain Jonathan was seated, and not about to topple off the edge. For that moment, she supposed that he had been a puppet of the Count's, even if the yearning expression was still the dominant one in Jonathan's eyes. She put her hands on his shoulders until he focused on her. The man she married appeared to be coming back.

“Jonathan?” Mina whispered. “Wake up the rest of the way, dear. We have company.” The words were innocent enough, but her voice shook.

“Sorry,” he murmured, even as he felt her touch. Jonathan struggled to make sense of everything in his mind, as it all came roaring back. “I’m remiss in my manners, Count,” he added weakly, knowing how mad it sounded.

Jonathan touched his face, dizzy before he finally looked around. It was like he was seeing everything for the first time. Perhaps it was the first time in this country, while he was in a state of mind that would not be constituted as delirious. He stared for a moment longer than proper, but despite being younger he still knew the Count's face. He should know that, for he had seen him outside, hadn’t he? The knowledge wasn’t fading this time. The Count never once took his eyes off Jonathan’s.

The feeling of something clawing at his mind and scrambling to take over, or simply unseat his reason began to lessen the longer he sat like that. He knew not to mention such a sensation to Mina, for she would think he was possessed.

Jonathan closed his eyes briefly, tired and uncertain. The Count had to have caused those delusions, and not merely the strain of the situation. Something of it might have been natural, for all he knew. 

Why were they all standing around and having a civil discourse? Why wasn’t he running? Well, his weakness prevented it, but if he were so inclined he might be able to make a tumble down the stairs to freedom with Mina’s aid. He was not so inclined, however. Neither his dignity nor an aching desire would allow such. “Did you cause my brain fever? Or was it my response alone?”

There was no reply, so he took that for an assent with the first question.

The women _had_ been outside the convent, in spirit if not in flesh, in that case. Had they really tried to draw him away from his protection? Had the Count’s very presence altered his mind? Some of those phantasms were real. It felt like he was allowed to think in this hour.

One thought resounded through his mind, and he said it aloud.

"I was not mad. I was never entirely insane, perhaps, save for a short span of time. Or was I?" Jonathan realized slowly, with wonder. "It wasn't a normal brain fever at all, then, was it? I was but a sane man fighting for his soul, as phantasms chortled and cajoled, holding dominion over my reason."

Mina wasn’t sure what she wanted the answer to be. She gained the nerve to reach out and take Jonathan’s hand from the opposite side of the bed. She wanted him to know that she was there, and would do what she could. While he didn’t look her way, she felt and heard a sigh of relief at the knowledge of her presence. Perhaps it was also for the fact he was not alone in witnessing the unknown.

He looked at Mina once, before he turned back to Dracula. She was his strength; the sight of her as much as her touch was helping to ground him. "I’m remembering so much more of what you did…but I find it more intriguing than anything.” From the Count’s look, it must be his influence. 

“When," Jonathan began before he swallowed and started again, as his voice cracked. It was his exhaustion. Mina handed him a glass of water, which had been sitting on the table for most of the night, just in case he required it. He sent her a look of apology for being the focal point of such strange activity.

He drank it quickly, and then started again. The water was horrid even as he did, and now he knew why. He was changing too much, and becoming like him. It must be why he had yet to be hungry since this began. 

"When your blood was not as strong within me, if such is what that was--was that why I was able to see and know what was the truth again? Was that why I could return to my mind in the convent, sir? Until then, I could only speak of bats and blood and poison; the claws of demons tearing at me, rats gnawing at me, wolves hunting me!" The Count's expression of praise at him realizing this was fleeting, but it was there.

He didn't know why, but it bolstered his spirits. He rose to his feet, even in his weakness, for he wanted to look this man in the eyes. It was a mistake, he realized, as his legs gave out. Jonathan was pulled to his feet after he almost collapsed before the Count. He leaned against the man’s chest, feeling himself beginning to smile grotesquely. Slowly, reluctantly, he forced away that strange inclination.

The Count’s fangs were obvious as he smirked. “My bite had consequences, Mr. Harker.”

“That wasn’t a diabolical fantasy,” Jonathan blurted. “When you carried me. That’s when it happened! I scarcely knew. I couldn’t write the extent of that night, only that I went fully clothed to my bed after the women were driven back,” he added with a sigh as his eyes fell shut. A touch of the other man’s hand on his head wasn’t repellant. “That was your doing. You bit me.” And then changed his clothes, to make him believe it was but a dream. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a confirmation.

It didn’t require a verbal response. He felt something wicked curl in his brain, before it withdrew. That, too, was the Count’s probing at his weaknesses, he presumed. Even so, it soothed any terror away before it could germinate. 

"You seemed to have suffered a physical ailment as much as a spiritual setback," Mina softly agreed as her eyes were pulled to look in another direction. Lucy appeared to be thriving. While she was pale, it was different from that anemic look that had so worried her, for it didn't appear to carry with it lethargy or listlessness. Mina was surprised to conclude that Lucy's new state suited her.

"You look well," Mina softly offered. "What _is_ your nature at this point?" Strigoi just felt too blunt a term for this. "Are you happier?" She must have what facts eluded her, and would know if Lucy lied about the last. She wouldn’t find fault or hate for this new woman if she was happy.

"Undead; oh, yes, Mina," Lucy acknowledged as she stared down at Jonathan. She only stepped away from him when Dracula gave her another warning look. True to a lingering need from the bite, Jonathan appeared sad at the rejection. He was better when Dracula moved closer again.

'The traces of such an illness as his do not lightly die away,' Sister Agatha had told Mina. Mina doubted this was her meaning. She wondered what her reaction would be to the root cause of his behavior. Mina suspected she would only question Mina’s final decision, and not her motivations. 

Mina knew it was Jonathan's choice to make, just as much as it was her own. Jonathan looked at her as though he just couldn't say the words aloud, but she still knew them. She felt the same. Her hand moved to his shoulder. "I will stand with you, Jonathan, as well as with you, Lucy," she managed.

There was a proud edge to her declaration, she found. "I will stand with you both in life, death, and...this undeath where you have found happiness rooted in the most unusual of locations." She swallowed, and her eyes turned to Dracula, as if to dare him to deny her the right to see to their continued safety.

Lucy smiled, and while it seemed hopeful and sweet at the outset, the wickedness bled through. Dracula gestured to her, and then spoke aloud for Mina's sake. "Your undeath would be an acceptable offering. Your place at our side would be...most welcome, Mrs. Harker."

"You must call me Mina," she replied softly but sternly. "I find this to be a decision of a very personal nature for all of us, so we must dispense with the formalities. For Jonathan’s sake, as well as mine." She would entertain this notion. She didn’t know why she was so calm about all of this when she spoke to him. Was it his power?

Still, she sent an uncertain gaze towards Lucy as she thought of the ramifications. She wasn’t sure she could do this unless she knew it was the best choice for them. Could she follow through? She didn’t know.

Lucy saw the uncertainty within her eyes and acted accordingly to fully gain her sympathies.

Lucy stepped closer to Mina, and took her hand much as she had when she was still alive. “We’re closer than sisters could ever be, you and I. Aren’t we, Mina? We could be so for eternity if you’ll accept me, and step away to live as I do…but I saw your fear.” She moved as though to step away, but Mina wouldn’t let go. Inside, she grinned. “Why won’t you accept us? Do you hate me so much?” Another pretty lie could strike at Mina's heart, she knew. "Would you have me become an eternally lonely woman, never knowing your comfort?"

Mina knew that Lucy just could not bear the thought of growing into an old maid at the age of nineteen, with twenty just a quick hop away. Lucy had written as much in a letter to the woman, as she pondered her choice of suitors. What of living forever? Would this do to sway her living friend?

Mina spoke from her heart when she did answer. “I could never hate you!” She was reacting to the sadness she thought she heard in Lucy’s voice. That struck a nerve, and when Mina spoke again her voice shook. “I will accept you for who you are. I always will. I love you! I can’t stop, even when you’ve begun to prey on my husband’s blood! Even when you should take my own, I will still love you!”

“Then let us share this gift, my beautiful Mina,” Lucy murmured in Mina’s ear. 

Mina nodded in confirmation. “Of course,” she whispered. “You’re right. I can do little else but share it.” She would not go back on this after all. She couldn’t bear to lose Lucy. 

She _wouldn’t_ lose Jonathan. 

For these two, if love cost her the sun as well as her soul, then so be it.

"If you insist, then so shall it be," Dracula agreed even as Lucy wove her spell over the woman. He spotted the ill-concealed proud gleam in Jonathan's eyes, as well as a stark relief. His young solicitor had yet to learn that he could hide nothing from the one who had sampled his blood the most, as well as binding him with repeated sips of the Count's own as he slept.

It had also been slipped into a goblet of wine as he dined for several nights to render him ever more pliable. It was far easier for his women to place Jonathan in a trance of longing in the castle under the circumstances, when he was so beautifully suggestible. Still, as Jonathan had partially noted without fully understanding, his hold over him had faded in the convent, and from distance put between them. These last few nights had banked the embers of a dying fire, making it reach new heights within the living man.

He had Lucy to thank for her predation.

While his will over Jonathan was strong, it would still be Jonathan's decision to give in to temptation and be transformed into something wicked and strong. He had chosen to join his circle at this point, with his lovely wife. The holiness of their vows must be shattered for them to survive in his world.

In Jonathan’s eyes, Dracula could see his creature had taken root quickly and overthrown all of the young man’s reservations and inhibitions. It poured through him like wine; it flowed through him, giving Jonathan life like the blood he and Lucy had been stealing from him nightly.

“I go where you lead,” Jonathan softly murmured.

The Count’s influence was deeply enmeshed in the depths of his mind and body and spirit. The corruption was nearly complete. He leaned closer to Jonathan’s ear. “Shall I awaken what must become your true self? Or do you prefer your old life to be returned, and you yourself a solicitor only?” He knew the answer, and was merely seeing how Jonathan would behave. Few ever wanted to go back to the way they were, when he pulled their strings.

“You know my husband’s answer,” Mina interrupted, as she detected that manipulation. “You’ve heard his wish. You have my life in your hands as well. I will follow him close behind into your realm that feels like a dreamland to a rational mind,” she continued firmly before she turned to look upon Jonathan. She saw understanding. “I will never leave you so long as we live, unless that is what you desire.” 

“It was a promise I made in friendship, and in love. It was said both to _Jonathan_ , as well as _Lucy_.” At that last, she stared Dracula dead in the eyes. She saw that he must certainly understand her resolve.

She would pity him greatly if he didn’t know her mind by now.

Jonathan grew almost distressed in a way at the very thought of not answering, before he shook his head firmly. “I want what you offer,” he insistently replied. “I—I love it. I want it as much as I wanted the three in the castle to touch me. I feel above myself, weak though I am. I feel apart from myself, as an onlooker until you act. I desire this.” When he knew and understood the origin of the impulse, then and only then did he succumb. 

He no longer knew what part of him was dominant, for all the melding of the impulses.

“’Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown,’” the Count quoted, reveling in the reply, and the expression on Jonathan’s face. He turned now to Mina. “Lucy has spoken of you. Now you may speak to your friend or paramour, whichever it is to be termed in this country, unless you need this one.”

From the look in her eyes, Dracula suspected this Mina's wrath would be awe-inducing were it roused against any that threatened Jonathan after they were transformed; she was already so dearly protective of Lucy. It would be a pleasing sight to behold one day when the blood splashed upon the stones and their enemies knew no more.

While Mina’s fear was great at the thought of prowling the night, neither dead nor alive, she would not let her fear rule her. Her concern that neither Lucy nor Jonathan part from her—her love for them, familial or Sapphic or platonic or everything and nothing at once intertwined for all time—took precedence.

Mina made her final choice between one breath and the next. She had spoken impulsively, but it was the truth in its basest element. For love of them, she would become like Lucy was, if that was the choice she must make. Jonathan would become like Lucy so very soon. Mina could see to it that they were safe. Mina could know if Dracula harmed one hair on either of their heads—ever again, in Jonathan’s case.

She would love them in this life or the next. The power of love was her recruiting agent. Mina could do naught but surrender to its whims.

She gently kissed Lucy’s cheek. “You have my answer. You know it. You heard it, and it holds steady. You knew it already before Jonathan let you in, didn’t you?” She said with a shaky laugh. Mina shook her head. “You have my heart, just as he does. You have my past, and my present. You are part of my future…and your kin shall have my eternal soul, too, won’t they? You have the largest piece.”

If the myths were correct, such was the way of it. If the myths were right, what better reason to be damned than for love? While it went against everything she had been taught, she couldn’t help but to ponder such a fate to be with them.

Lucy beamed with delight at a plan that had gone well. Mina had made her happy, and that made her glad in return. Lucy spun to face the Count. “Can we transform them at the same time?” She eagerly wondered. “The time is shorter for the wait to see my Mina like us if we don’t take another hour!”

“Of course,” Dracula replied in approval. “They will return to life closely.”

“Might we speak in private, you and I?” Jonathan asked Dracula. This felt like something he shouldn’t intrude upon. Having known the two women for most of his life, he was understanding of Mina’s declaration, and not put out in the slightest. He had a request and a question or two, as well. He felt clearer, as though his brain were at last unfettered of a great burden. 

He didn’t have to fight any of this.

He knew his memories were factual. He knew he was not delusional. He knew he was not suffering wild imaginings, as all of his memories had fallen back into place the moment the Count’s red eyes had looked so deeply into his in this very bedroom. 

Those eyes had bound him up; those eyes had set him free. No matter what he did, Jonathan found he could not hate him. Something in him wanted to embrace him, but he did not. Not yet. He could only wonder about some of the more vague memories in the castle, and suspected he would only learn later what had truly befallen him.

“We must speak as well,” Lucy purred. She chuckled at the shiver it caused in Mina, as she was leaning against her. She couldn’t wait to learn how she was in her new state. Her eyes gleamed as she tugged Mina’s hand, so that she might follow her. They required solitude. That seemed to befit the change.

Jonathan gave them a brave smile. “As it may be our last act as…a married couple, I will bid you the fondest of farewells,” he softly called. “Until death do us part. Until we see each other again. Until the night we are reborn. Until the earth becomes our bed.” He winced at the last. He had suddenly remembered striking the Count with a shovel as he lay in his earth. He caught her hand as she passed, and gently pressed it to his chest before he kissed it. 

It was more a token gesture of their deep friendship, and how far they were willing to go for each other, than a kiss of a married couple. 

Mina returned his smile, and leaned down to kiss his forehead. She knew it was a brave man that took her hand, for he was not ready to go back on what he truly wanted, no matter how harrowing it was. “Until then, yes.” She moved to step where Lucy pulled, staring deep into those crimson eyes that promised a joy beyond human understanding, though it would be laced with such sin and death that she could not hope to fathom it yet.

They would become more than themselves.

They would protect each other from the dread such shadows conjured.  
\--

“I have questions; surely you understand that some things I don’t wish to see answered in front of Mina?”

Dracula appreciated that Mina’s mental strength was greater than he originally presumed, just from how she stood up to him tonight. He could see Jonathan felt the same when he looked into his more private thoughts. “I presume that need will dwindle after tonight.”

“I presume you are correct,” Jonathan ruefully noted.

Jonathan sat in silence at the edge of the bed until he could no longer stand it. It was just as worrying when there was such silence in the castle when the Count was with him in the library. They were without Mina, and so he felt he could speak freely before this man of darker desires and worries. He had been bitten, and certain emotions had been stirred; it had occurred multiple times, and he had to admit that he recalled one incident in the castle he had never written down. 

He had found himself unable to question it. He had once been bitten upon the wrist, where his cuffs would have concealed it for a time. He knew the origin of the small scar was not incurred while lost and afraid in the forest. He looked up to see red eyes fixed upon his own, and he stilled. 

He wondered what it was that the Count truly cared for about him as he stared into his eyes. At last, Jonathan found his voice. “Were you surprised by my escape? Did you hope I would be a quick feast for the three weird sisters?” The vampire appeared fascinated by that description of them, judging by the expression on his face. “Did you instruct the wolves to pursue me?” 

He had been without shoes in the wilderness, in terrain both the animals as well as the women had known well. It was horrific, but he had eluded them all, with numerous narrow escapes.

“I believed you would leave Transylvania upon my coach, Jonathan; I never thought it would be alive,” The Count conceded. “To have survived such a trek across a land you never once glimpsed in the daylight hours, though…that is a feat worthy of my attentions.”

“I almost didn’t make it back to England with my sanity, as you well know by all I’ve said,” Jonathan shakily pointed out as he held himself, shivering. It was no wonder he was always cold, with so little blood. To his surprise he found it was not an accusation; he merely wished the man to know he could have been met with a madman. He looked back to find the Count had stepped closer to him.

It didn’t shock him. Such quickness from a creature like him rarely did surprise Jonathan anymore. Something inside him relished the demonstration of this man’s superior power.

“Lucy informed me of letters regarding Mina’s excursion to gather you. Your blood, and your thoughts have confirmed the rest,” Dracula replied. He smiled coldly, seeming to take pleasure when Jonathan forced himself to look away uncomfortably. “A recent bite does not mix well with the holiness of God,” he whispered in the living man’s ear.

“What do you mean?” Jonathan warily asked, when he suspected he knew. 

“Had you not been in the grip of this so called brain fever, and lost within yourself, your mind would have torn itself to shreds from the temptations of my kind,” he hissed. “The division within your soul lingers still, exacerbated by our desire to claim you. It would have been stronger, with you so recently escaped and malingering. You were…fortunate to be so distracted.”

“You almost sound proud of that,” Jonathan noted, stunned. Was he reading him correctly? 

“You have proven stronger than my first supposition. That is an advantage among my kind, and soon to be yours and Mina’s.” Fangs were easily seen through the smile. Did Jonathan hear a growl nestle through his thoughts? Why, yes, he did. “It was but one gift I desired to provide you, though events sent you briefly upon another course.”

“I desire it now, as you well know. I continually say it, and now I say so in my rightful state.” Jonathan knew this should scare him, but it did not. He longed to be bitten again, preferably by the Count although he would not deny Lucy her tastes. “I find I want this more than is proper or healthy,” he confessed with a shaking voice. 

Jonathan felt a secondary excitement rising and coursing through him as he turned away from the man. He should stop referring to this thing within him as another being. He found himself beginning to welcome it. 

He soon found himself with the strength to stand, gazing out the window. He could see movement. He imagined he might have heard Mina’s footsteps in the fog if he strained.

He had never heard Dracula’s steps upon the stone in the castle, and therefore expected to hear no noise to mar Lucy’s passage through the night as an otherworldly being. He swallowed, wanting to wrench himself away from the scene or lack thereof. “Is it wrong of me to want to see them when Mina’s time draws to a close as—as a normal person like…me?” Jonathan asked, in a hushed tone. He was almost afraid for the answer. She mustn’t be alone.

“Yes,” The Count confirmed. He paid no mind to the expression of exasperation on Jonathan’s face. “Though you will reach that passage moments later, young sir.” His hands moved to Jonathan’s shoulders, for the time of his change was to be appointed by him shortly. 

Let the man ask his questions if he must. It was no delaying tactic.

“When I look upon you, Count, it feels only natural to accept your offer,” Jonathan revealed with a puzzled frown. He supposed that it was primarily all the consumption of his blood, which had caused him to be this way, but something else about him took precedence. “When I look into your eyes, I feel as though I am falling away.”

“As a snake sheds its dead skin?” The Count wondered, amused.

“So long as we continue in this fashion, then I am certainly shedding my life,” Jonathan agreed. “I am…becoming something more?” That was the best description he could find for it.

It didn’t feel evil. It felt right. It felt as though he was meant to do this, and it was merely a part of the natural order of things.

He perceived how tense the Count was; as with their analogy, he felt as though the vampire were poised to strike like a viper. Jonathan barely turned his head to allow him entrance. Then, he found it sliding gently backwards. He was even closer to him than he meant to be, against his chest. It felt right.

Jonathan licked his lips, a mild uncertainty taking shape at this crossroads. He had felt so righteous before, as though he had found his true purpose. Perhaps it was the blood loss of earlier that caused him to feel parched now. Perhaps he was not thinking straight at all these days.

Perhaps he was still in a great forest in that never-ending night; perhaps he was cloaked in madness and steeped in supernatural longing for a person who never existed. No, he realized; it was a fool’s errand if he dared to deny all that had transpired, and all that he felt now. He put one shaking hand over Dracula’s ice cold one to ground him. He didn’t feel he must beg to touch or be touched. 

It was time.

This was his signal. He was ready. “Is there to be no ceremony?” He suddenly wondered. “No goblets to catch your spilled blood when it is to be my turn? No dark rituals to initiate me fully into the underworld, and steal my soul?” Jonathan murmured with a feeling that he was brushing against gallows humor in his final minutes. He knew he would soon enter the house of the dead and, perhaps, even occupy a coffin while still conscious and alert. 

“You were already bound to me in the castle if you recall,” Dracula chided. “You were induced to forget,” he nonchalantly noted. “You may have felt drawn to me even before Lucy took a taste, and it was not from the simple bite. That is why.” There was something to be said for honesty when a man was due to die. Even if that death would not be permanent, honesty would still be doled out in meager scraps.

He ignored the man’s shuddering gasp of pleasure as he brushed his own lips against the mortal’s sensitive throat. His fangs brushed where Lucy’s bite mark was. “Dark rituals, Mr. Harker? Those would only prolong what we desire, do you not think?”

It somehow felt fitting he would be Jonathan’s solicitor into a new and darker land.

“Do it,” Jonathan urged in a whisper that was faint, but easily heard by a vampire.

Fangs entered Jonathan’s throat once more on this night, and he opened his mouth in a silent gasp. It was all he could do not to swoon on the spot from the strain. He grunted and just managed to speak despite the waves of emotion crashing over him like a tidal wave. It was faint, but it was coherent. “You…must…let me go to Mina before we are both dead. P-please.” The whisper was quickly lost in a whirlpool of emotion.

At the same moment his mind went blank, a bloody palm was pressed against his lips until his mouth opened. The warmth of life was being replaced by a coldness that began to burn. Jonathan choked before he steadied.

Jonathan took a shaky breath as he was let go, and sagged to the floor. He gazed at the other, unable to think straight. Hysterically, he wondered how much blood was left in his body. He shook his head with determination as he tried to fight back a darkness closing in on his vision. 

He still didn’t desire that Mina be alone in her final hour. Even if she was with Lucy, he must see her to the end as well.

Would Dracula keep his promise? Could he witness her passing?  
\--

Mina paused once, but chose to do as Odysseus had done. She would look back, but they would never be lost to each other, if they did this together. She gazed up towards the bedroom window, knowing her husband would be standing there. He did not let her down, for he was taking it all in, she perceived.

Lucy and Dracula had done this one favor, and made an allowance. The fog had parted so that they could look one more time. They _were_ becoming as they were, after all. Mina wouldn't think of estimating either the grandeur or the complexity of Jonathan's emotions or convictions at an hour such as this. She wouldn't dare, lest she misread him entirely. Even his silhouette identified him as a man who had come to an impasse and made his choice for good or ill. 

Mina saw her husband bowing his head, and then look back over one shoulder, presumably to speak to the Count, before it was raised once again. His posture showed resolve, but not regret. That was good. Mina found she couldn't regret being with both him and Lucy in their new lives either. 

Oh, what would she and Lucy have thought of themselves in this hour, but a few short months ago? They may have gasped and bemoaned such a tale that belonged in the well-worn pages of a penny dreadful. They may have chided Mr. Swales for simply trying to scare them at their favorite spot near the bay.

Neither would have believed such a tale without proof. Well, shortly they would be dwelling within such proof. Science had no place in a world of phantasms and magic. Mina would love this phantasm; this apparition; this spirit made flesh; this vampire. Whatever Lucy was--whatever Jonathan became--whatever she herself chose to be--they would accept each other with open arms. 

They went back inside. Neither needed to speak or question the other about their reasons for doing this. Even with fog curling about them to conceal their actions, this wasn’t something any insomniac neighbors should see by chance, through an ill-timed look. They made their way to the drawing room.

Mina opened her own arms now in a welcoming gesture. Lucy wrapped one of her own about Mina's waist before moving back. Then, her hand slowly drifted upwards until it found the back of Mina's neck. Mina closed her eyes, knowing it was time, and adjusting gradually to the chill. "How did you choose, Lucy? When did you choose?" Mina wondered, barely able to ask such a personal thing.

"He was persuasive that final night, by his deeds alone," Lucy cryptically replied. "I will tell you all of the events of that night when we have more time." The smile couldn't be stopped, for they would have forever. "I will tell you more things that would turn your ears red, than you ever heard in our letters of my proposals!" For a moment, she resembled the Lucy of old, who just wanted to gossip with her dearest friend.

"Your presence alone is equally persuasive," Mina allowed. She touched Lucy’s cold cheeks. “Did you send the dream? Was that the prelude to your current ministrations?”

“Yes,” Lucy acknowledged as she stepped closer. She desired to open her arms, so that Mina might lean closer still, if such a thing were possible. Something prevented her, though. A dull ache formed when she touched her throat. She was prevented from more by something concealed on Mina’s person.

“Did I do it all of my own free will?” Mina asked. It was a question that must be answered. She had wondered since the conclusion of that dream. Her languor and placidity within that delicious and erotic imagining were not her natural state.

“It was more your will than mine,” Lucy laughed, though it was strained by that sensation. “I kept you in the room.”

Mina had hoped that it had originated in her own soul, but to know the feelings were reciprocated only emboldened her. Mina fell into Lucy’s arms. Lucy moved to press her face against her throat in defiance of her earlier reluctance. Lucy suddenly pulled back with an anticipatory light in those eyes, coupled with mild outrage at some perceived slight. 

There was also pain in their depths. 

Mina looked down, and remembered that the cross was still hidden. Had Lucy felt what was there? Now it was time to follow through, and show just how she would protect Lucy. She would keep this from her sight for however long she was able. "Look away, Lucy," she whispered. She slowly pulled it out. 

Lucy turned away quickly, with an almost inaudible growl.

“I said I would never willingly hurt you, and I meant it,” Mina softly reminded her. She held it in her own palm. Not knowing that she was echoing the actions of her husband earlier, Mina opened the closest window. The cross was cupped in her palm. She looked to Lucy where her friend stared at her with gleaming eyes, and only shook her head. Whatever she thought earlier in regard to the Count, she was determined that Lucy could not be so evil. “I will never hurt you,” she reiterated.

She held the hand out the window and turned it over. The metal caught the gleam of the moonlight as it tumbled into the shadows below. 

It was lost to her, wherever it lay. She turned. Lucy was much closer, with a hand stretching out towards her beseechingly. Mina wasn’t afraid. She finished the action, and clasped it. She felt its coldness, and still pulled the woman it belonged to into a hug. She then brought it to her face and kissed Lucy’s palm.

Between one breath and the next, the hand was gently tugged away from Mina’s grasp. Lucy moved behind her, circling her, putting arms around her to steady her, and then stand directly behind her. Mina remained still, knowing what must come next.

Then, Lucy was out of her sight. Mina couldn't turn to look when fangs were pressed against her skin lightly. She gathered her wits about her for however this might feel based on what she had observed in Jonathan's behavior. She knew from her dream how it _might_ feel. Even as Mina breathed 'I love you,' teeth sank deeply into her throat. She felt a pull, gentle at first, before it grew, but no pain.

A steady excitement grew deep within her; there was a growing weakness as blood was drained from her at a fast rate. A pleasure she could scarcely have ever conceived overwhelmed her as her eyes began to roll back in her head. She was gasping for air. Strange feelings coursed through her very soul even as her blood was consumed. 

Mina smiled. 

Blood was drawn slowly to savor each moment between the pair. A small moan escaped Mina at last. She gasped in a pain that was equal parts terror and bliss. She closed her eyes, the world briefly fading out. The sensations stopped. She felt a cold mouth kiss her own and responded. 

The mouth was gone; a bloody wrist moved to replace it.  
\--

Jonathan felt fangs enter his throat again; he was being lifted, and then placed back on the chair, for easier access. He didn’t struggle, though he did seek to rise to aid him. He managed to stubbornly keep his footing despite his weakness. One shaking hand of Jonathan’s fell limply to his side before he felt he was no longer being drained. His eyes felt too heavy to open. 

A wrist was insistently pressed against his mouth, a second taste joining the first. His eyes fluttered open. He obeyed when he was urged with merely a look to drink yet again, in his own time. More was being provided to be certain that the Count’s will was seen as superior. Jonathan wondered how he knew that. The thought was washed away in a vibrant ecstasy.

Jonathan’s legs went out from under him and he was eased back down; this time, it was back to the floor so that he would not hurt himself. When he tried to open his mouth to speak, some instinct only shushed him. He waited, wide-eyed, sprawled on the floor. Jonathan swallowed, dimly tasting iron. “Thank…you,” he managed, as he began to tip over.

Jonathan saw darkness closing in at the edges of his vision for a second time; he wouldn’t fight it. Jonathan’s breath only came in gasps that he had to fight for. A thought struck him, then, and he tried to speak, only for a weak gasp to emerge. His journal. Mina had dropped it. Others could find the Count if they could read shorthand.

Others would come and end this. Others would come and drive a stake through _all_ of them! With surprising strength, Jonathan grasped the Count’s wrist, paying no mind to the dried blood of his communion. The Count waited expectantly, and Jonathan found he had to struggle to form any further words.

“The journal—it… _tells_. Fell!” He managed that much. With that, weakness reclaimed him; Dracula made him lay back down, just before he could strike his head against the back of a table leg. He would not let the Count come to harm by his actions or lack thereof. Something wouldn’t let him. Jonathan hadn’t been able to say _where_ it was, to his distress. 

**_‘Open yourself, and I will see its location.’_** Jonathan understood. That other piece of him began to swamp his mortal self, and he readily obeyed. The words were a terrible comfort, but he felt the other creature’s satisfaction as the Count moved through his consciousness.

It was on the opposite side of the bed, hidden by the covers, which had fallen onto the floor. Before they parted this dwelling, the vampire made certain the dying, changing young man could see his actions. The Count picked up the journal, and without reading a single page—for by the sight of Jonathan’s thoughts, he could not have read such a coded thing—cast it into the fireplace. With the Count’s will behind it, the flames greedily consumed it.

The barest piece of the cover of the book was left behind in its wake. Then, once more, the flames surged higher still, and rendered that as ash. Ashes were all that was left of the pages that proclaimed the truth. Jonathan grinned as he watched, feeling fangs nicking his lower lip; he didn’t care about the sensation. He felt the urge to kiss the man, but hadn’t the strength to rise.

He felt a sense of heady intoxication. His intentions must have been clear in his eyes, for the Count knelt beside him and tilted Jonathan’s chin up with a clawed finger.

“You will be strong enough for carnal pursuits after you wake. That will come after your rebirth. Have patience, my friend. Let yourself be swept away,” the Count murmured in Jonathan’s ear. The man was still changing, but he had promised to allow a glimpse of Mina’s change, had he not?

 ** _‘You will see her. It is time,’_** were the words filtered through Jonathan’s mind, as slowly as treacle could pour. He heard them as though from a great distance. He felt himself first lifted up and then carried, much as he must have been the night the Count interrupted his women. 

The world faded for a time.

Jonathan slowly drifted back to consciousness, only to find that he was still in the Count’s arms. He was being shifted, though, so that his attention might be directed towards another event.

He turned his head and felt a darkness rising as he saw Mina. He could see what Lucy was doing, and how Mina was being transformed through such a blood filled initiation. He heard himself give a low laugh. He opened his mouth to urge her to do as she desired so long as she felt she must, and he would think fondly of her. “ _Drink_ , Mina. Drink as much as you can. Do it, and we’ll all be yours _forever_. You’ll never doubt that, Mina. We will feast on the blood of the weak.” 

He sounded jubilant; he sounded darkly pleased to see Lucy attached to Mina’s throat, as though this was all he ever wanted.

The words weren’t what he intended to say _at all_. Were they his, or were they what he now understood was taking over his life? It felt incredible, even as he knew his mind was failing him. His eyes moved up and became fixed on the Count’s. He sensed his approval swirling through him.

“We’re yours,” Jonathan just managed to force out. He could no longer watch Mina and Lucy, for he was at his own crossroads. “In…life…and...in death,” he finished with great effort. Just as he and Mina had declared, he would declare it now to this man.

He felt as though he were falling. He felt the sensation of being caught by something else. When he tried to look away from the Count, it felt like he was looking at the world through a red haze. Dying was like going to sleep, but something else was waiting for him. 

Red eyes filled his mind, and he saw no more. Jonathan’s final thought was but one word. _Glorious._ He would never fully recall his final words. He would only recall his cheek leaning against the elder vampire’s chest. Coolness radiated from it, a bit colder than him, but not by much; not a single heartbeat was there to lull him to sleep or death.

Jonathan’s own stopped soon after. The Count perceived the young man’s eyes gleaming redder than ever before, before they closed for the last time in this life. He was proud of what he had successfully wrought.

Mina weakly stretched an arm up to caress Lucy’s face as that wrist was taken away; she heard Jonathan, but paid him no mind. She couldn’t look away from Lucy. She managed to weakly grasp her hand, clutching it to her chest. She didn’t care that blood was seeping into her gown, even as Lucy’s wound closed. She was scared as she felt her heart slowing, and needed to feel the touch of someone she loved.

With a slight smile, Lucy shushed her before she could say anything. She reached down and stroked Mina’s cheek, slowly, lovingly. She kissed her forehead, with a need that could not be contained.

Mina died in her arms, feeling safe. Lucy closed her friend’s eyes just as they began to have the barest flicker of red.

Lucy lifted Mina like the children she once fed on in the graveyard, easily and quietly. She knew she was beyond hearing for a time. Still, she spoke to her. “You held on longer, dear Mina,” Lucy murmured. 

Her next words were almost sung, much as the old nursery rhyme she recollected. “Now I lay thee down to sleep, and your soul _we_ shall keep. Your body will be protected from the early morning's light." In a softer tone, she continued, even as she pressed her cheek against her briefly dead friend's. "Go to death for a little while; you’ll be right back. Just like me. Just like _him_. You’ll soon become so much more than you were. We’ll be so happy, and united in death.”

The vampires carried their new children of the night in silence across the threshold. They paid no mind to the sound of one drop of blood falling from Mina’s throat and splattering on the wooden floor. The wound itself was vanishing, as though it was never there. 

They had the ones they wanted to collect.  
\--

Dracula glanced to the other side of the carriage; Lucy was quiet with her paramour; her friend; her newly changing companion. She was lying as close as she could to her on the bench, arms around her tightly, chin on her shoulder. Nonsense words of no importance to anyone but Lucy reached his ears from time to time. He ignored them.

Anything could happen until they reached their destination, and it wouldn’t penetrate their little bubble. 

In time, he must teach her not to be so careless. In time, he must do so, but not tonight. He himself was distracted by his own new charge. Jonathan was limp on the bench, with his head in his lap. He made certain that the bouncing of the carriage didn’t send the body careening either out the door or into the wall.

He would mold _him_ as he saw fit.

The Count was amused at how well things had gone in this new land so far. He thought back on how he came to possess his solicitor. A well-placed look had entranced Jonathan in the castle, as they chatted in the library. He infiltrated the living man’s defenses, even before his women sought to seduce the living man. 

That very same night, he had drawn Jonathan close to him; the man had been half unconscious, though still awake enough to be worried. He had calmed him, and then he had taken his meal in Jonathan’s blood. He had fed from the veins on Jonathan’s wrist, where he would not think to look. Jonathan would remember that, but not what came next. Once, he had fed from another place on his chest, close to his heart, for the same reasons.

Jonathan had been so deeply within the haze of a trance that he would never have recalled it were he not at the precipice of life after death. Perhaps it was simply the man’s overwhelming need to get home that aided his escape through the dark forest; perhaps it was something more that had been tucked away inside him.

It was an exquisite brand of manipulation. It was even better, now that he could corrupt Jonathan further as his perfect deadly creature, with more time than a mortal’s paltry lifespan afforded him. Being bitten by Lucy, as well as the Count himself had sown the seeds of his corruption quite well.

It wound through and made one vulnerable to undead suggestion more than Jonathan already was. Jonathan’s time in the castle, in such close proximity, and confined by his will and touch…it made him malleable in his heightened emotional state to his ideas. Lucy’s aid and bite only heightened how receptive Jonathan was. It enabled the both of them to try to draw his sleeping mind, and in at least one instance prod what they had planted enough that Jonathan had hinted to Mina of things to come.

Lucy was correct as well, the Count knew. Mina wanted her. She couldn’t resist the closest of her friends. She couldn’t dare abandon her husband to these twisting, writhing shadows. When people had but one night to choose wisely, they rarely sided with the path that ended in a permanent death. Most chose the course of eternal damnation for love of another.

A diabolical light grew in the Count’s eyes as he shifted and observed the stillness of his new fledgling’s current state. He was still dead if one only looked at the surface. Beneath the skin, changes were occurring. Deep inside him, blood given would war for dominance; the Count knew that his would win, being older. Lucy would not have a true claim, for she hadn’t drained and fed him last.

That mind of Jonathan’s he felt, and sensed the barest of flutters as the change into a superior being crept through his very essence.

He knew exactly where Jonathan’s hunger would first be channeled and directed towards. It would allow him to eliminate a potential loose end that should never have come into being. A madman should not have become vital to his machinations. He drew a sharp nail carefully down Jonathan’s face. No blood welled up, but he didn’t expect it to; the mark was gone as though it never was, even as it was sadistically, if affectionately, created.

Soon, this one would awaken. Shortly thereafter, R.M. Renfield would be no more. He planted the name in the darkest recesses of Jonathan’s mind, and smiled at the weak, but audible, and instinctive hiss that emerged from him. He could see the fangs were sharp enough to tear. A grin fleetingly crossed Jonathan’s lips, before it was gone, and he suspected the man was dreaming of what would be his eventual first meal.

Then, he stilled even as the red glow eked brightly from the corner of his eyes, before it calmed. The Count’s touch quieted him back into a more dormant phase of his death for now. They were not where they should be.

Not yet.

“You will be able to please me soon enough, young one,” the Count offered as he slowly leaned closer. “Do not be impatient,” he rumbled in Jonathan’s ear. “You will have a bountiful feast.” His palm against his shoulder, he felt Jonathan sink back into the abyss. He rooted through his placid mind more than he had earlier. He threaded himself through there, to aid in the change. This man was _his_. He would brook no insolence when he revived.

 ** _‘You will do my bidding, Jonathan Harker. If I so desired it, you would be the instigator of terror in the streets of London. You will slay my enemies when I request it; you will bring those to me that I wish.’_** Dracula could sense the man’s will bowing before his stronger one. Perhaps Jonathan would become just as entertaining as the three in the castle had once been, oh, so many centuries ago. Jonathan would still have his uses as a solicitor of London, too, of course.

Just a little while longer, and he could learn this one’s quality of viciousness. Just a little while longer, and he could learn if Lucy made the correct choice for her own companionship.

He had seen Jonathan’s desperation to pen words across the pages of his precious journal back in the castle, and presumed it to be a madman’s fractured state when he deliberately attempted to read it once. However, research and probing the man’s mind had informed him that it was a form of communication called Pitman’s. There was time enough in an eternity that he could learn it, so that he could thwart his or another’s secret communiqués.

He doubted Jonathan would try such a thing again, however.

Jonathan himself had begged that his journal be incinerated as the darkness rose up within him at the end; he was thus proving who his soul’s true owner was.

Let Jonathan now sing a new verse in the night’s song, until mortals wept in lurid fear of the night’s whispers. 

Let the book of night be opened wide, as he had so creatively heard Lucy quote to Mina.

“Carfax, Milord. Milady,” came the call of their bitten driver. He had once been a man of great means, but now he only moved by the Count's design.

The vampires smiled as they gathered their cargo.  
\--

Van Helsing stood at the door of the Harker residence, having finally arrived in Exeter after many delays and one carriage with a lame horse. In his doctor’s bag were the letters from Mina to Lucy. He wished to speak with the woman in the light of day, let her explain certain matters, and warn her of the danger she was in.

He wanted to get a good look at this Jonathan, and see how badly his body desired blood. Certainly at this juncture, not only would there be sharpened teeth, but a need for a transfusion. He might have a hardy man or two willing to provide, much as they had done with Miss Lucy, if only he knew for certain.

As they had with Miss Lucy at the end, he wondered if the marks on Jonathan’s throat had yet had the opportunity to vanish, and the damnable parasite held back no longer. He prayed he was not so late as that.

After several tries knocking, peering in curtained windows, and a continued silence from within, he realized that nobody was home.

He looked over his shoulder but once, knowing his driver would wait. He must, for John was his employer, and had threatened to fire the man if he abandoned his former teacher. Given the hour, even a servant should have answered. Someone should be before him at the door, hair in disarray if they were pulled unexpectedly from either slumber or a vigil by his summons, wondering what on earth could be the matter.

Growing concerned, and giving up on legal means of entrance, he tried the door and found it unlocked. It swung open without a creak. There was one drop of blood on the floor, and no more. Was he too late? On the mantle, he located a note to allow a woman named Millicent leave for one month and no more. He guessed she was household help that was not around to question.

He stepped further into the house and found it eerie. It was too quiet for a new couple’s home, and should be bustling with life. It should not give an air of death.

He found a lantern left unattended on a table, though it was burning low. Little was disturbed as he walked around downstairs, aside from that one drop of blood. Would he find more? He moved to ascend the stairs. Despite the sun being out, he didn’t want to draw the ire of any creatures that may still linger here. Armed with a crucifix, he went up to the bedroom. 

He expected to find bodies, but nobody was there.

There was a fireplace in the bedroom, filled with great heaps of ash, as though large quantities of material of some sort had been burned. There were no signs of a struggle, but one drop of blood was here on the carpet, as well. He sighed, surmising that the ranks of the undead had increased in number by two, and that he was too late to save them.

It was just as he was too late to hammer a stake through Lucy’s heart, when she was no more than a fiend stealing children to bite in the graveyard.

Van Helsing picked up a small diary on a table near the bed, and guessed it belonged to this Madam Mina. He flipped through its pages, hoping for some small clue. Alas, Van Helsing knew not the shorthand. If John did, he would have him read the diary to him. If he did not, surely they could find someone among his friends or inmates who were coherent enough to do such.

He looked closely, and found a few splatters of blood on the pillow. Yes, Jonathan would have lingered between one world and the next in this bed. Perhaps he fell into damnation and died in this very place. 

Finding this woman’s diary should have aided them surely and swiftly and made his day sunny and bright. However, if they could not find the key to the perceived code, he was as adrift as ever. He wondered if a translated copy was what had ended up in the fireplace, and shook his head. There was no way to know that without access to a machine such as the great H.G. Wells had written about.

There were darknesses in life, and there were lights. From this woman’s friendship with Miss Lucy, from their letters that shone a light into her mind and soul, Van Helsing suspected that the newly wedded Mina Harker had been one of the lights.

Had been.

It was a pity that something must have certainly happened to her. Even if he hadn’t been so fortunate as to have met the dear woman in time, Van Helsing knew it with every fiber of his being that she had been a good person. She had cared for both Miss Lucy, as well as her ailing husband.

He moved to descend the stairs, and as he turned the corner at the bottom, he happened upon a telegram almost hidden from view beneath the table. It was hidden from the rest of the unanswered mail in the shadows of the furniture. He only found it thanks to the sunlight chasing most of them away. 

It would have been impossible to locate at night. Events had likely occurred far too swiftly for them to see to such simple matters as locating this, he suspected. He knelt and picked it up; and then he saw that it was his own.

He held it to his chest in wonder. It was his very own missive, which sadly proclaimed Lucy’s death, and it had never been opened! Someone had received it for them, placed it down, and perhaps never told their mistress before the dismissal. They had not known!

They would not have suspected her if she had shown her face. They would not have known what devil was behind that angelic visage if she wooed them with falsehoods.

Van Helsing quickly strode down the driveway and leapt into the carriage. He felt fit to burst as he slammed the door and covered his face in his hands. He took a deep breath and steadied himself; he was grateful John wasn’t there to worry.

“Oh, how we are beset. That these unknowing souls allowed monsters into their home and were lost to them,” Van Helsing moaned quietly as he crumpled the telegram in his fist and threw it to the floor of the carriage. He kicked the bench. This was no King Laugh situation, and he was alone but for the ears of a driver; the clopping of his horse’s hooves likely drowned the driver’s hearing out as they began to move. 

The man had his instructions, and already knew the destination. He had no need to fill him in.

Then, he thought better of discarding the telegram. He picked it up from where it lay, glad that he had not torn it to shreds in his anger. Smoothing the abused paper on his lap, he unlatched his doctor’s bag. He slid it carefully in with the letters, and then placed the diary within. The telegram could still be of use later, if he needed to look back on where the tide turned against them a second time. He might want to recall when he had been close to warning a kindly woman in time, if not for a delay in learning her exact whereabouts.

As with the horse’s nail causing mayhem in metaphors, so, too, had one single missing letter. It was found by the assistance of a maid of Miss Lucy’s, who recalled where certain items had been placed in the chaos of her death. 

Such was how fate occasionally laughed upon them all, he thought to himself. No matter. Other lives could still be saved from the vampire’s maw. 

He was at a dead end for now, but would keep an eye out for vampire attacks mentioned in the newspapers. He would return to the asylum. They would determine what must be done next.


	5. Chapter 5

Mina Harker was reborn between one instant and the next, though at first, her body didn’t move to reflect that.

Mina inhaled slowly, more out of a lingering habit than a basic human need, as she began to come around. She felt an exhilarating emotional sense of contentment seeping into her. There was also an ever-growing hunter that removed all reason and left her, finally, clenching her eyes shut as she curled up into a ball. The worst of it began to subside after half a minute, before she felt she could move again.

Her nose twitched, as she unconsciously scented around for any sign of blood. As he eyes began to flutter open, she found that she had rolled face down into a mass of dirt. She smiled, for this was only her native soil; this was a nest, of sorts, until she could get her bearings. She knew this without being told; she felt herself growl, and then sighed. Home. She was home, and it was time to find out her mettle with how much blood she could shed properly.

Her eyes shot open, now fully alert as she was forcibly rolled over; she lashed out, but her hands were easily caught. Mina smelled fresh blood under her nose, and latched onto the proffered wrist. The grip loosened, and Mina found that she could reach out with one shaking hand, so that she might better grip it, and was grateful not to be yanked back. As she drank, her hair was stroked by a familiar touch, as though she was a child.

When she had just enough to blunt the pangs of need, Mina slowly pulled her fangs out of the bite and watched it heal itself in something akin to awe. That emotion was blended with a sense she knew that would happen. She looked up, feeling a heightened gaiety, and a wanton need blurring together as she took in a face that blended in with the shadows. “Lucy,” she sighed, and the tone told her feelings perfectly. She was overjoyed that Lucy was the last face she saw in her life, and as well as the first in her rebirth. “Why?”

“I needed you with a clear head; the Count did such to me, when he found me,” Lucy smiled as she leaned back against an old table. By the cobwebs, it had sat there for centuries. They moved to embrace one another as tightly as they could, for they were each strong enough to take what might have pulverized bone before with only one being undead.

Mina touched Lucy’s face, and realized there wasn’t a speck of light in the room. There wasn’t even a candle for show. She could still see perfectly in the inky blackness. She could see every detail of Lucy’s face and fangs and form as though it was the brightest of summer days.

Lucy trailed one sharp nail down Mina’s face as she took in the changes in her. Slowly, her grin widened. “Welcome to the night, Mina Harker. Welcome to a world steeped in shadows, and a thousand million joys.”

It had been the same for Lucy, on her first night. She was a sleepwalker at first, before she shattered that habit carried over from life and embraced the dark. As Byron’s poem had stated, and as she had reminded Mina in dreams and in person from afar, the book of night was opened wide to their kind.

Night was their hour. Whether they were in Purfleet or Exeter; Paris or Graz; Vienna or Transylvania, they would make merry in the shadows. They would drink deep from the masses as they slept. Whether their minds dreamed ill or pleasure, the joy gained from younger veins would forever entice Lucy.

And now, her treasured friends would know the exquisite pleasure, too, in whatever taste they preferred. 

For once the Count spirited her away from a meeting at the sharpened stake wielded by the damned Professor and the men she once loved more than she could admit, a plan had formed. In his wisdom, Dracula had shown her the flaws within it. He had eased her fury by showing her the proper way to entice one into their world. Her mistake had been in taking too much the first night she bit Jonathan.

It wasn’t as terrible as when she had been bitten, for he had not lost all of his blood in one night. That was her belief.

She had her Mina. It was all worth it.

Mina smiled in reply to Lucy’s welcome, for she was thrilled to the marrow of her bones. “This is wonderful. I see everything with new eyes,” she burst out. “You’re so beautiful this way!” She had said such before, hadn’t she? Her eyes hadn’t been like this at that point.

“It might have been too loud without my blood to ease you in. You would be upset by the mice stomping their tiny feet like elephants floors above us,” Lucy revealed with a smile that said she was pleased by Mina’s compliments. She leaned closer, and played with Mina’s hair even as she straightened up her collar. It was filthy, between the dried blood and the fresh dirt she had been writhing in.

“The Count and I gathered a few items for your portmanteau. Right after we scooped the two of you up, and out of your humdrum existences that were soon to settle in,” Lucy chuckled. “I put you safely in the carriage. I’ll help you tidy up later.”

“You’re welcome to, Lucy,” Mina replied in a sultrier tone that might have surprised her in another life, for it was hardly chaste.

Lucy kissed her, and when they parted it was reluctantly. When Mina stepped away, having finally found her footing, she still held Lucy’s hand. She had thought she might walk as a newborn fawn might, all gangly legs and collapses until she adjusted, but no. She was elegant and swift in her movements. 

Mina’s foot bumped something as she turned to take in everything. It was Jonathan at her feet, and she frowned. Something must be wrong. “He isn’t awake yet? Why not?” She crouched, and touched his face. Right now, she looked to Lucy for all her answers. 

Lucy’s reply, when it came, was strange to her. “Hot blood mingles, and still he fights it out. We’ll see who his Master really is.” She smiled at Mina’s confusion. “We drank too much from his veins over too many days. That’s bound to take him longer than you.” It had taken her a while. “I gave him some of mine; the Count gave him some of his.” She let Mina surmise the rest.

“He only needs to heal,” Mina said in understanding as she touched his hair. He seemed to lean against the touch, before going still. She checked his eyes, and smiled when they glowed with an inner light that was a vibrant and purely blood red. It was steady, but not quite all there when it came to his consciousness. She glanced up, needing to know something that had just passed through her mind.

“That night, Lucy,” Mina began. She suspected she already knew the night in question, being twisted up in Mina’s mind. “When Jonathan said that you waited, and I pushed him to stay on the mattress, who spoke so angrily?” She still wasn’t sure if she could have hurt him if he had been incited to do her harm, but she suspected neither would have survived with her scissors in hand. “Was it you? Or was it _the Count_? It was not that which Jonathan was changing into! I know it was the last right as I lost consciousness through your equal efforts.” 

Mina remained protective of him. She suspected she knew the answer.

“It was the third that cried out for our touch, and then the second; you thwarted the Count himself, to his surprise,” Lucy smiled, with a hint of viciousness from the fangs peeking out. She had been present. “You saw his reaction in your husband. He was only the vessel for the beauty of his anger. While _he_ was looking back when you peeked as you just did, _I_ saw through his eyes just as easily.” The poor thing’s head had been so _very_ crowded that night. It was fun, though.

Lucy kissed Jonathan’s throat, solemn and regretful that she could never take sustenance from those veins again. Even for a glorious purpose, it would never satisfy her. “Not to worry, poppet,” she whispered in his ear, when she saw a tiny frown come and go. She peered back up at Mina as an idea struck her. “Oh, but _I’ll_ pull him out and be the stronger of us for him.”

Lucy winked at Mina playfully, and then moved to the still form of Jonathan. It was almost like a trance with the way he stared vacantly, but he was ready at last. She saw his eyes fall shut again, for he wasn’t truly there. She had seen a stirring of something in his eyes, and chose to play with him and ignore the worry. "Just watch," Lucy murmured. "You will see something of how _I_ awoke that first night. Rolling away, wondrous and alive."

Perhaps it didn’t work like that, Lucy mused. Perhaps it was more who held the greater power. Lucy wanted to lord it over Dracula, just once. She had instigated all of this, after all. She had sampled him more, hadn’t she?

Despite never doing such a trick before, Lucy was confident she could do this and reach Jonathan. One simple tug, and it would all be fine. Where was the harm in not waiting for the Count’s return?

Mina wondered at the thought of being stronger than one so old as she suspected, but held her tongue. Lucy could be right. Just this once, she wouldn’t point out the flaw, for she was in muddy waters. She was worried, though the gaiety of manner that came with this new world desired to bubble up like a spring. She touched Lucy’s hand, as her desperation came to the forefront. “Bring him back to us, Lucy. I know he trusts you. Surely he’ll come out of this for you.”

Lucy nodded once, and then got to work. Or _course_ she was going to do this, even if she had never considered thought transference in all of her breathing days on the planet. Lucy carefully threaded her consciousness into Jonathan a bit at a time, much as she had when he was alive. She did it gently, in tiny steps rather than a tidal wave of thought, so he wouldn’t end up choking on it, if such a thing were possible. 

Then, she lingered in brief silence so that he might grow accustomed to her occupying the same space as him.

There was still another path to take to reach him, she realized when she was at the halfway point. She only had to follow the quiet panting growls that increased in frequency. She could find him from there.

Lucy _did_ find him at last, but only _after_ taking three wrong paths and one very convoluted dead end that was basically swirls into nothing. Lucy suspected he was confused in his slumber, but she soon saw his form.

Jonathan was curled up, seated as though he was propped up against something, and had been dragged thus far before someone had discarded him like an old rag. It was almost like he had gone halfway from there, but something had distracted him. Lucy wondered if he was just waiting to be dragged out by his hair.

She really just wanted to get back and coddle Mina and pepper her with ardent kisses, and the most sensual of touches. She would pry him loose and be on her way. Lucy was optimistic. Jonathan would be well, and he would quickly be off to be the good hunter that she knew he must certainly be.

Finally, impatiently, she forced Jonathan to his feet and shoved him towards the way back to being up and about and master of his own fate; the captain of his soul. She mused that perhaps she should not think of poems when she was working to rescue a mind from an eternal cataleptic trance.

She sensed when he finally acknowledged his whereabouts as well as her presence, though he never looked back; she herself thought he seemed lost and quite distraught. She urged him to just go, seeking to use that connection that had been forged through her feedings in his life. She couldn’t be certain that he understood. **_Don’t go into any lights, never the path with the light. That way is a true death. We will never abide that again._** If he was too confused to understand her warning she didn’t know what she would do.

The road taken only for their kind was notable for the fact it was the one route that swallowed the light as greedily as their kind did sustenance, and was steeped in ripples of red energy at the end. Lucy ignored the fact that he never once spoke to her, responded to her thoughts or looked at her. She went back the way she came, and thought those ripples looked like blood was seeping out.

She blinked, and between one second and the next, she found herself back at Mina’s side. She smiled and hoped it looked confident. “He’ll be along shortly. I think he was dawdling for his afternoon nap.” She wondered if Mina would accept that lie, being as inexperienced as they both were.

It was only sleep, Lucy told herself. Sleep had once been a presage to horror for her when she hadn’t understood the call of the night. That was when her blood still flowed, and her heart still strove to beat. There was no terror in it now.

A long growl emanated from the man at their feet, and she shared a smile with Mina. Lucy leaned down to touch him. 

Jonathan's eyes snapped open, gleaming a brighter and more vibrant red than ever before. However, they were devoid of more than instinct. Lucy realized she had made a grievous error by not letting it be natural, or perhaps because it was her. The stare he turned upon her didn’t show a trace of recognition.

He hissed, and then grasped her wrist to yank her closer to him; he was instantly maneuvering them until he was on top, preparing for the first life he would take. His fangs were sharp, and ready to bite through the jugular. He moved down to her throat with great rapidity, and then stopped in confusion, sniffing before he went still. He had his fangs close enough, even as she shoved hard enough to jar him loose for the briefest of instants.

The scent of death had penetrated the haze of a violent hunter. Or, rather, the smell of a kindred creature had briefly deterred him. He paused and seemed lost as to why she wasn’t his bounty to feast on. He drew away. She was undead, and therefore something had told him that she would be rancid to his palate, and leave him sick. He still reached close and clutched her arm. As Mina approached, his face shot in her direction; he growled a warning.

Even in this state, something held him back from immediately attacking her.

His clawed fingers were drawing blood; soon, there would be an effort to maim what he considered his opponent. Mina successfully dragged him off of Lucy, and surprised herself by yowling at him. She shoved him further, and he flung her back. She didn’t lose her footing. She put her hand to Lucy’s shoulder, and saw that she was recovering.

Lucy crouched low to the ground; she was ready for him since she at last had room to move, and could deflect as best as she could. She was ready to take a bite out of his shoulder if he did that again; she had been taken by surprise. She expected she might be forced to tear his throat out herself, and put him down. She hoped it wasn’t so, just because she had done something wrong.

Jonathan began to pounce. Before anyone could make the next move, Dracula swooped into the room. He had sensed the melee, and plucked Jonathan from mid-air. He slammed him into the wall. He kept his hands gripped at his throat. Jonathan managed to get several cobwebs tangled in his hair, but he was beyond caring as he squirmed, silently snarling and twisting in an effort to free himself. “I felt him, and your mistake,” Dracula revealed, even as Jonathan lashed out.

Whatever his intentions may have been in regards to doing him injury, he missed; the Count was quicker.

“He wouldn’t wake up. What else could we do?” Mina wondered. She shook her head at the Count. “Why did he not wake up as he was supposed to?”

He directed his words to Lucy, though he knew that Mina would listen. “Obtain me, so that I might prepare the way for reason,” Dracula smirked. “My blood dominates him, and sends him to a frenzy of need. The wrong one sought to draw out his essence before his time.”

When he glanced back to Mina, he saw that was not good enough for her. She wanted this one to be as he was. The Count’s eyes were probing, but she didn’t back down. “His strength must rebuild. I will rectify that, and bring him back to you.” He grasped Jonathan tighter; his will forced the man from feral creature into a hypnotic state. They slid down the wall together, so that the Count would not look away from him and lose the advantage.

He let go as Jonathan’s eyes fluttered shut. He crouched beside the man, and looked at him closely. Yes, there was the answering red glow from beneath the closed lids, he could perceive. He was still ready for instructions. 

He leaned forward, and put his hand on Jonathan’s forehead as though checking him for a fever that was no longer possible. In reality, he was sensing just how submerged his creation was from springing into life. Lucy had meddled in his affair, and he would show her the truth when it came to this one’s obedience. He found Jonathan, not so far as he suspected. He was just beneath the surface, when the Count’s influence was meant to send him fully into hibernation until he was called. 

“There he is,” he murmured for Mina’s benefit. “I will pull him loose.” ‘ ** _Jonathan Harker…as you hear my voice, you will obey. I command your active mind to…awake!’_**

Jonathan instinctively lashed out a final time; he was trying to shove away a perceived threat in his groggy state, and instead cut the Count with his claw-like nails. He suddenly rolled away and come to a stop only when he bumped into the nearest coffin. His eyes darted from one face to the next, as he tensed, running on instinct, and growling. The growls were weaker than before.

“Please wake up fully, Jonathan,” Mina urged. She knew better than to get any closer in the state he was in. She might be a vampire, but he could still do some damage. She might have shouted that this wasn’t him, but neither of them knew enough about who they were anymore for that to strike to the heart of the matter. They were both too new to this world.

Dracula glanced down at the slice across his chest, and judged it fortuitous. Jonathan’s eyes were filled with hunger, and that must be seen to lest he draw attention to himself outdoors. 

The Count drew a longer slash across his own chest. “You will taste of my blood, and you will be yourself again, as you were meant to be.” He waited for the scent to reach Jonathan’s nose, and smiled at the reaction. “You will take just enough to bring you back to these ladies, Jonathan,” he chided beforehand. In this creature there would be the instinctive need to taste the blood of the one who turned it. Jonathan darted forward, and put his mouth over it, beginning to drink. The Count stroked his hair, as one would the fur of a pet.

Jonathan, amusingly to Dracula, began to nuzzle the blood before he returned to the feeding. He bit down once to widen it, and get the last allowed to him as the flesh closed. He just didn’t _want_ to stop, even as his mind finally cleared.

After a minute passed, Dracula tightened his grip on his hair and pulled Jonathan back. The man gave a startled gasp, but didn’t look as wild as he had. “My…my apologies, sir. I overstepped my bounds.” Jonathan cautiously touched where he had so zealously fed not a moment prior. He was just fascinated at the speed in which the skin had replaced a wound. 

He feared reprisal for his activities, but was grateful for something substantial all the same. He went with his new instincts, even as they baffled him. He fell to one knee, and shook his head before he dared to look up again. “I lost myself, but you have restored me. Again, I must extend my sincerest apologies for my brashness.”

“You only required your true Lord and Master,” the Count replied dismissively. “You…required the right one present at your birth.” He had planted that reaction, as a form of amusement for himself and a warning for Lucy. He could have done far worse. Therefore, he knew the manner in which to handle it with unshakable certainty.

Jonathan saw the others, and he smiled slowly, contently, yet almost reluctantly as a result of what he had almost done. The Count nodded. “More will come later,” he told him. “I will give you three a few minutes alone,” he granted.

With that, he was gone without a sound.

Jonathan rushed to their side, uncertain of his reactions to anything, though he was drifting to a need for his maker. He pushed it aside for this time. “Everything was blunted, and harsh. You didn’t smell right, but I still wanted to hurt you. It was like I was a puppet, until my strings were snipped. I didn’t hurt you, did I? I simply felt as though you needed to die, and sought the most expeditious route.”

He was uncertain if he would be welcomed after his attack. 

“We don’t hurt as easily anymore; the Count stopped you at your worst,” Mina assured him, though she restrained herself for another instant. His eyes seemed much more aware thanks to the Count’s intervention. He was calm. Was it truly a miracle the Count had been nearby?

At last, she could no longer stop herself. Mina hugged him, for he was her Jonathan. He gazed at her curiously and then took in Lucy. He smiled as his and Mina’s foreheads touched when he looked back. Finally, she let go and he stepped over to Lucy.

“I can remember now, Lucy,” he told her, though it wasn’t an accusatory statement. “You bit me that first time in front of the office, as I began to make my way home. Thank you for coming later when Mina prevented me.” His grin was just as wicked as hers. “I was too weak to stand from all of your attentions. Your blood was a marvel. His is a miracle inside me.”

“Yes,” Lucy smiled. From him, she knew that was no insult. She felt the same. “Come to me if your mind is no longer entranced?” Jonathan did, embracing her quickly in thanks. She kissed his forehead as though anointing him, and grasped the sides of his head to stare him in the eyes as they parted.

"Welcome back, Jonathan," Lucy finally added in lieu of more. She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand, not wanting to worry him further. "You were magnificent. Oh, we thought you'd sleep the time we had away, and miss everything!"

"No," Jonathan snapped harsher than he intended. Then, he relaxed, and his words were softer when he continued. "I truly feel wonderful. _Exquisite_." He noted that he had slept on top of a freshly dug mound of earth before he had been so rudely awakened, and been rude in turn, and smiled. He recalled what he had seen of the Count's slumber in the castle, frightful though it was at the time. "He prepared for our changing," he mused at the sight.

"I wish for more than sleeping,” he added, then. “Mina?" He reached a hand towards her; he realized his curiosity was entirely platonic when it came to her now. Their feelings had been half dissolved by their death, along with their vows. Their friendship remained. 

Upon his expression, Mina nodded. "I feel the same," she assured him. Without thinking, she held fast to Lucy with her other hand. These three would not be parted, and she could see that by the fierce look in Jonathan's eyes as they went from one hand to the next, he may very well bite the first person that tried.

She suspected she would do the same, if not worse. 

He quickly reached forward, stroking Mina’s cheek. "One of us dropped my journal." At Mina's expression, he guessed it to be her, for his sense of self had been uncertain at that moment. "I knew one of us did, and no more, for I spotted it. Before I...died, I let him know. Did you read it all?" He innocently asked.

Jonathan paused, then, and gave a dark smile. "Oh, my word. He has placed where I shall go this night into my mind. It has floated to the surface. I just _know_ that this hunt will do nicely!" He really must thank him appropriately. 

"Only to a point before you cried out," Mina confirmed at the questioning look. “So far as when he carried you safely to bed and did not wind your watch,” she softly added. There was no jealousy of those three, only a mild worry for his mental state there at the end. "What became of it?" She was pleased for his last comment. 

"It was cast aside, into the fire. None shall know," Jonathan insisted as he looked from Mina to Lucy. "Nobody can translate ashes. Nobody can hurt him for my negligence. _Nobody_ can find us."

They nodded almost reverently at how the Count had taken care of things.

“I can show you around this place, if you like. I’ve been on the grounds before,” Jonathan offered as he finally looked around for himself. He saw every insect trapped in every spider’s web, and every other thing crawling out of the crevices in the night. He heard the wind whistling through the holes.

Lucy looped her arm through his and pulled him close. “Are you certain that you recall the most secret places? You won’t be lost? You can show us around our new home, dear Jonathan?” In truth, she was testing that he was mentally competent enough after that display of almost throttling her. She had decided that was her fault, though the Count could have warned her.

Jonathan smiled at Lucy as though she had said the most ridiculous thing imaginable. For a solicitor, she had. That was astounding to think that a solicitor wouldn’t know a thing about the house he had sold. “Of _course_ I know my way around. I copied all of the maps I could find for him.” His trusty Kodak might have aided him in his eventual wanderings through Carfax if he had a frame of reference. He hadn’t seen it since his escape from the castle.

“I will show you the beauty of this ancient keep, Mina; Lucy. Whenever either of you desire to see such dusty splendor, my ladies,” he added teasingly.

Perhaps she was only testing him. He could see it in her eyes. He had been lost in the blackness of death for too long, though he didn’t remember much until Lucy had endeavored to guide him out. She had failed, but his true sire, Dracula, had not. Jonathan shook himself of those thoughts, for that wasn’t a state that was going to bring anything but concern from Mina. He had seen her looks.

Jonathan still knew the way to the chapel. He wondered if to step across that particular entrance would mean he and they would be struck down as truly dead by the holiness. He suspected not, and dismissed the dim superstition that had bled through from his mortal days. If it were so, the Count would not be among them.

He must ask the Count if there were any such weaknesses as lightning striking them before a church, though. 

Suddenly, Jonathan found a desperate urge rising, and glanced around the room, before he began to pace. He held up one hand when the women looked nervous, but was glad Lucy was ready to clobber him with some nearby statue from where they glanced. 

Mina and Lucy shared another tense look. “What do you seek?” Lucy asked, even as she saw him sniff the air.

“I’m not going to attack,” he swore, as he watched Mina put down that large mace that had to have sat there longer than the Count had even been alive. After doing so, she wiped it of dust. “A coffin is what I seek. Have you picked yours?” He plaintively asked. “I need to select mine, and it’s a desperation.” Why didn’t they feel this need clawing at them?

Lucy smiled, for she had no need to answer, having probed Mina’s mind moments ago. She had both questioned the other woman, and received an answer, which pleased her. 

“Lucy offered to share her own with me, and I have accepted. Therefore, I need not fret about my choice,” Mina revealed. The offer had appeared in her thoughts. It was only natural that they share a resting place in death as they so often had shared a bed while they were alive. Mina directed his gaze to the white coffin.

Lucy remembered fondly how the Count had kindly enlisted body snatchers to take her coffin from the graveyard, to Carfax, since they hadn’t the time before sunrise. He killed them when it was delivered. She had slept with him in his coffin until that hour, so it was only right for Lucy to share her own.

“Do you require soil?” Jonathan asked. He wanted to help them.

To humor him, they acquiesced even as they knew they could have done it in their own time. He had so much more nervous energy that they would let him dig as much as he pleased. With sharp claws to make it easier, he soon brought up enough earth for several boxes. Then, he lovingly put it into each corner of what was now a shared coffin. He even tucked it in neatly, beneath their pillow.

Before he could see to locating his own coffin, Lucy stopped him with a kiss on the cheek, and a nuzzle. It was not meant to seduce, more to tease as one would a baby brother. “Such a helpful little Jonathan. Oceans of love, my sweet.” He chuckled, and then that peck became more ardent before he pulled away.

“I found my place,” he softly told her, after gently turning her in that direction. It looked old and careworn; it was black, and looked mahogany. They wondered how long the Count had had it in his possession. The name of whoever first lay in it was scraped off.

“It smells right,” he nonsensically added as he stroked a finger down it. “It feels right,” he said once he opened it and felt around. There was Transylvanian soil within it, so he went out of his way to dump that into another box, so the Count wouldn’t be angry with him. It shouldn’t mingle with his. He wouldn’t simply discard it. Then and only then did he put his own within it.

Mina took in the changes in him. She presumed there were just as many to be found in herself, but she was blind to them. He was still just as practical as ever.

Lucy followed him, poking his cheek with a grin that Jonathan found himself returning. He had always found her smiles contagious in life, and it was seemingly still the case in death. “The Count took you the whole way your last night, dear, and you _are_ his, but you’re also half mine for some of that blood. I could soothe the fire in that belly if he doesn’t entirely satisfy you someday.”

She suddenly stopped. “Are you certain you remember all of my efforts? Everything? Not only my blood and my last time, but the rest? I was too ill to grasp many things when it was my time at his fangs.”

“Yes,” Jonathan verified with a smile as he clasped her hand again. He was pleased. “You were first in England, and he followed,” he chuckled. He realized he had echoed the three in the castle, and wasn’t particularly bothered by that. “Whose was the right to begin?” He asked, after sharing a knowing look with Mina. She had read that far in his journal. She shook her head at him, not particularly impressed by the reference, even if it felt fitting.

“Oh, Jonathan. That is terrible,” Mina chastised. Still, as she spoke, she was grinning against her better judgment.

Jonathan might have continued with his little joke, but he saw that Lucy was just confused about what she was missing. He wouldn’t; not at her expense.

For Lucy’s sake, Jonathan instead tried another method. “I can tell you all that you might not know when we’ve all fed. I can’t bear to confuse you, and you know it.” One finger played with the hem of the sleeve, before she pulled it free and laughed. “I might leave something out, for hunger. I might add something, for your pleasure.”

While Lucy was lost at their comments, his efforts made the best of it. “I can tell it will be a wondrous tale, Jonathan Harker, just from one of the letters Mina sent me of your progress after you left him. If it were something as boring as recipes, you wouldn’t be so desperate to tell it.” When he and Mina glanced at each other and looked away, she guessed the implications, else he would have denied the accusation. “Oh, you were always good at insinuations, weren’t you? Have one of mine.” She smiled, fangs showing. “He fed you; I fed you. He bit you; I bit you.”

Jonathan pieced together the rest, even if all those times blurred together in the end. “I know he fed me in the castle, because _he_ knew. That makes me primarily his,” he said in a manner that was almost a boast. He didn’t know why he felt the need to do such.

“A smaller piece is still mine. Remember that,” Lucy said almost viciously. 

“Always, dear Lucy,” Jonathan smiled with genuine fondness. “Always.” It wasn’t enough to pull him away from the Count, or divide his loyalty. It simply wasn't allowed, and he was happy with that. He wouldn’t remind her of that.

Mina intervened, lest Lucy become riled enough to attack. There had been enough of that tonight. “I am all of yours, however, Lucy. I trust you will be satisfied with that,” Mina reminded her sweetly.

Lucy was, and it showed. She never wanted to share Mina.

Jonathan sensed his need for the Count was of tantamount importance. He belonged at his side, but he knew to keep that to himself lest he cause a row inadvertently. He wanted civility, even if it was a presumed façade in his new state of being.

He smiled with joy as another sense successfully began to flare into being. He turned his face towards the doorway. He hadn’t felt that before, when the Count was shoving him into walls.

Lucy nodded. “See? You feel him. I know you; you were scared you wouldn’t, not fully.” She shook her head, delighted. “He’s part of us, Jonathan,” Lucy continued as she touched his back carefully. “Can you feel his presence flowing, wafting, coursing closer to us with each passing second?” She asked.

They turned as one, and watched as mist began seeping into the room, and reforming as the man himself. 

He held out a hand, and Jonathan stepped slowly into his arms without thinking. He only thought he heard the barest of commands resonate through him. He breathed in the older vampire's scent, not even conscious of doing so until the man spoke. "You are realizing your gifts as quickly as I had hoped, my friend," the Count noted.

"Do we venture outdoors soon?" Jonathan hissed quietly. Now that he could think, his desire to feed on human lives was boiling over. It felt like all the work done in pulling him back from the brink could soon be fading if he didn’t sink his teeth into _someone_.

"I understand who it is to be, but we're ever so hungry. What of Mina?" The Count only had to command him, and Jonathan didn't think he would care if his target were that madman, or the innkeeper's wife, or even a child in a burlap sack. “I know who…I know where…now say _when_. I beg for that without reservation,” he urged. He kept the growl in his voice to a minimum, only with great effort.

He felt a dark affinity within him now that he was like him. There was an understanding that ran deep for the three weird sisters now that his mental state had altered so substantially. He wondered if it would last beyond his first meal.

"Yours is a discussion best done in private,” Dracula replied as he opened the door, and gestured for him to follow. “Lucy and Mina shall go together, as is commonplace among our kind," Dracula soothed as he stroked Jonathan's cheek once, just to see the result before they could leave. 

Jonathan leaned against that touch, and it moved from there to the back of his neck. He needed to be distracted; he would do his best to please this greater man, so that he could be at his side as long as he must be. He would put his connections as a solicitor to whatever uses the Count directed. He felt an unwavering loyalty that would brook no insolence. He couldn't ever conceive of such a thing.

"You will have a greater taste of my blood outside of this room," Dracula whispered in his ear. The joy was amusing to witness. He had his attention. Good. "You will find the path through me, but it is up to _you_ to find the invitation inside its stone walls," he continued. "Perhaps you will be found wanting?"

"Never! Never," Jonathan breathed firmly, practically swearing his fidelity. He didn’t care what anyone else thought of him. "I will do all that you command. I will go wherever you lead. I will gain entrance."

It was exactly as he had predicted when he had bound them in a union of blood. It was exactly what he had intended when he had planted such thoughts in the recesses of Jonathan's mind. "Come," Dracula instructed as he took Jonathan's arm. "We will speak of certain matters quickly, and perhaps I shall inform you of your first victim's...proclivities."

Dracula saw at last the dirt that had been dug from the corners. Before he could say a word of judgment, Jonathan pulled away. “You have been busy,” he noted.

"In the library, sir?" Jonathan prompted. When the Count nodded his approval of the suggestion, Jonathan hurried to lead the way. He knew the way to the library. He suddenly turned as they walked. "Have you yet explored the deconsecrated chapel, sir? Or must we avoid it?"

"You did well in your selection, without ever knowing; we may enter and leave the chapel as we please," the Count found himself admitting. “Or I may if I must, and may bear it for a short while, while you will find a…purifying atmosphere that will pain you in a differing amount from me,” Dracula warned cryptically.

He noted the glad smile at his first comment, which grew wary as he finished. They resumed moving just as a rat crossed their path. Jonathan moved as though to startle it and make it leave their sight, still halfway thinking as a human. Dracula shook his head as he pulled him into the library. "Use them. Tempt your prey with them. Draw them to you, before you draw the fly-eater. Demonstrate in reality or figment that these are your army to command. Win him over before you strike," he advised. 

He smirked. "Be not appalled by what he consumes before you, if he continues to do such without reservation, for we are above him. He seeks what you have earned. He covets it, but shall never be reborn."

"Win him over with sights he could scarcely conceive the depths of depravity of, or the magnificence. Woo him. Tell him I have such sights to show him, make him trust me...and sate myself," Jonathan smiled, as though speaking of law books and history lessons. It might be a fascinating exercise. He bowed his head once, for he fully understood.

"Make me proud; I will be listening to your every lie, so savor this night," Dracula hissed in Jonathan's ear. "I will see through your eyes. I will listen through your ears. If I wished, I could speak through your mouth, though I have my doubts it would come to that. I will not need to ask of the events, for I will have endured them through you." Casually, he sliced his palm, much as he had when he had changed the man.

"My blood is your blood; my kill is your kill," Jonathan agreed, enraptured. He was ever so grateful. With that, he felt Dracula begin to fill his mind with the knowledge of his kill. There was Renfield’s name, of course, as well as his former occupation and current obsessions, which came and went with the whims not unlike the tide. Jonathan saw the proffered blood, and knew he was to have his taste again. 

"Thank you," he whispered as he bent his head low to savor the taste, drinking all that he was allowed. He sensed and already knew that wherever he went in the world, he could hear the Count.

For the Count was his Master, and there was no other above him. 

Jonathan was his to command, and the vampire could only love his new station. He knew if he did well, he would be rewarded with an ecstasy that would know no bounds. Finally, Jonathan stopped drinking, as he knew he must. He remembered the moment he was yanked away earlier. He began to pull away, with a reluctant but satiated sigh. 

“Wait, my solicitor,” the Count entreated before his youngest could depart his presence. Jonathan was so pliable in this moment, now that he had supped on his creator’s blood. The older vampire knew that this was the time in which he must add to the young man’s repertoire of talents, as it were. 

Jonathan paused, knowing he must listen obediently, else he might be forced to wait another night. He stepped closer, for he sensed that would please him more. 

The Count touched Jonathan’s willing mind again, now that he had fed upon his sire’s blood; he showed him methods of summoning and conjuration in thought. The younger could bring rats by the thousands, out of every crevice and from every dark place once he was taught. He could learn how to do this to suit a madman’s needs, and tempt him into receiving an invitation.

 _Or_ Jonathan could be taught to create the _illusion_ that he had done so, to illustrate his power only to his prey. If he had not yet honed his talent, this could be the best method. He placed within him that which would cause it to be foolproof. He put the proper smell of such vermin, and the taste and touch; he showed him the proper shade of red that would be emitted in dim light, and how the baleful eyes would gleam like fireflies. He placed exquisite detail of the art that Jonathan must learn to hone on his own, painting it across the canvas of the mind as an artist would.

All this, so that it would not be declared a falsehood of the most wretched caliber, and leave Jonathan stranded. It must not be known to be a counterfeit or a sacrilege before the zoophagous inmate’s mentality.

Jonathan had no words for this gift of knowledge, and only knew that he would show his true appreciation later.

Mina and Lucy could hear just how satisfied Jonathan was from a prolonged sup of blood, even this far away from the sight of the act. They understood the truth. Death dulled the mind; rebirth awakened the senses and rekindled it anew. Every nerve would be joyfully heightened. Mina kissed Lucy passionately, though her desperate hunger made it weaker than it surely would have been otherwise. 

They could hear the men planning in the aftermath. The mystique of their new state was becoming something that they wanted to play with, too.

The Count sent a tendril of thought to Mina and Lucy. It was the signal that, once Jonathan had been sent outside, the duo’s own hunt could begin.

The women eagerly began to plan the whereabouts of their own excursion.  
\--

Mina, following a period of reflection, thought that surely they could _not_ be the type of devil she had dreaded. Surely her true self was intact, for she felt splendid. No, she felt magnificent! How presumptuous she must have been in her old life to believe such silly lies. It would have been a sobering thought whenever she didn’t see her image in the mirror, if she still clung to the tattered vestments of that life.

As they prepared for Mina’s night, she explored the grounds with Lucy. Here and there, they found a sign of how this place must have once been. There was an old book, placed down, and never picked up again; here was a dinner plate, never washed, though long bare and covered in the webs of who knew just how many generations of spiders. Lucy bid her follow, in silence, almost like the spirit she had mistaken her for in her dreams.

Together, they explored. There was time enough, for the night was young.

Mina saw that Lucy was not far behind her after she ran ahead; together, before they set out to explore their own horizons and test Mina’s potential, they stared up at the moon. They didn’t have to go far to see it, for one of the rooms in this abbey was missing a piece of its roof. 

The moonlight shone down upon them. With childlike wonder tempered by lust, with these new eyes, she took in everything that was lit by it. At Lucy’s expression, she nodded even as she put her head on her shoulder. “The sweet moon on the horizon's verge,” she whispered to her.

Neither of them were maids on the eve of womanhood, she mused, as she remembered more of the poem.

Lucy responded in kind, from memory; she altered it slightly for their situation. “There was but one beloved face on earth, and that was shining on her.” Each knew they were the other’s beloved; in their rebirth, inhibitions and fear and worry were cast aside. They would always be able to feel each other through the power of the blood, even in this Neverland; this Carfax. There was even an ancient mansion in that poem.

While it was no longer a blue sky canopied in the day, the midnight darkness was by far the more beautiful on this night. They heralded eternity, but they would not pass like spirits of the past. The blood they shed, the lives they cut down—those would be their shared future. They were not Sibyls. They were not woodland nymphs set free in a glen, or sprites.

They were more. They had _power_. They truly could give breath to forms, which could outlive all flesh, Mina mused now, as she recalled the words penned by Lord Byron’s hand.

Hand in hand, they moved in silence, their bodies almost crafting a waltz all their own. It was a dance done in a way that reveled in their new states; it ended all too soon, as they pulled each other through the building.

They walked through the garden, overrun with vines; they stepped over the broken pieces of the walls, and stepped outside through the holes that were caused by nature and neglect. It was like a dream. In the rubble of Carfax, in what could be considered these gloomy environs to one alive, they were free. Mina’s opinions, however, were not altered when it came to Count Dracula. Yes, he made Lucy, and she, in turn, transformed her. Yes, he made Jonathan of his own will and his blood.

Mina felt that the distance in lineage allowed her to have a clearer head. It allowed her to see the Count as he truly was, when he manipulated; insinuated; tormented; _haunted_ another. It behooved her to notice his lies.

She pushed those feelings aside for now, as they continued arm in arm. Tonight was their time. She couldn’t possibly delay her first meal an hour longer when the ache grew. Lucy’s expression revealed to her that she was just as eager for to savor this night, though it was not _her_ first.

Mina would make her proud.

In silence, they made their way into town. The Count’s coachman was deemed unnecessary. The gas lights twinkled in the night; with the moon as it was, it was, like they had stepped close to a circle of fairies, as in olden days. Mina felt that more must become as they were; more must be initiated into their way of life, if only to see the night in all its wondrous beauty! The crickets sang a symphony, as they squeaked in time with the rats hidden in filthy alleyways.

It all sang through her. It all made her want the nectar of life, the more she wandered. She pulled ahead of Lucy, then, though the other was happy to let her be free to give in to her nature. She was being remiss, and so she waited for her. Mina was eager for fresh blood, but she didn’t think she was quite so deprived as Jonathan had sounded. Then again, two vampires had not fed on her over a prolonged period of time.

She marveled that just a short while ago, seeking people out for sustenance would have been appalling. She _was_ changing, she must admit; she hoped it was into someone who still resembled a modicum of her former self.

Lucy reached backwards, taking her hand as she moved ahead of her best of friends. She turned, smiled, and kissed Mina on the lips. Mina responded, and Lucy pulled away. “I must tell you all about how we pick up our innermost wonderings now. Or later, when you are not so famished?”

“Everything?” Mina felt excited when she should be embarrassed. Even in life, had they read each other to such an extent?

“Remind me to tell you what a fool I made of myself, the first night when _he_ came for me at the crypt,” Lucy sighed. It was mostly private thoughts of Mina that were revealed for him to sift through. It would be the same sort of feelings, were Mina to use her power and peer into her mind. Soon. “Such a silly and fiery thing I was!” She moved closer. “Would you like to watch Jonathan’s first meal conclude, once _we_ partake?”

Mina smiled carefully. “Let Jonathan have his privacy on this of all nights.” She didn’t want to intrude upon him. Still, she might leave the window open for him.

They summoned enough fog to make anyone blind to their activities. Mina made it swirl even thicker. Only her heightened vision enabled her to see where Lucy was without crashing into her. She could even see the pulsing and throbbing life of others just outside of their reach. “I cannot wait much longer, dear Lucy. Where do we go? Is it to be your choice? There certainly wouldn’t be many souls in the park, at this late of an hour?”

She would look to Lucy for guidance, for she knew what to do in this regard.

“Children go wandering into graveyards alone,” Lucy chided. “Such sweet things, but so _small_. They won’t fill you. They can’t sustain you for very _long_ at all. You have to lure two or three with games,” she advised as though it were commonplace. For her, it had been until there had been better prey. That would be why they were merely desserts.

To Mina’s mind, that certainly wouldn’t do. “How about that sweet young couple? Don’t they look nice?” She directed her gaze when she took Lucy’s arm. Let them blend in if anyone could see. She had seen a woman in the street, while doing errands as Jonathan was stuck in his bed when they were both still living. 

The woman walking with a man could very well be her again. Was it coincidence, or something more? As she pondered this, a chimney sweep passed them by. He seemed to be endeavoring to make his way home, but just couldn’t find the lane. Mina glanced at Lucy, seeing hunger writ upon her face. She nodded to Lucy quietly, ceding the man to her whims. What happened next was almost too quick to see. He was yanked into the fog, bitten, drained dry, and placed beneath a bush.

She stepped closer to Mina with a smile. “Now you’ll have privacy,” Lucy cooed as she licked her own lips, once she had patted away the soot. She had been famished, too, but quickly realized she should have shared. 

Mina shook her head with a small smile, quietly impressed by how quickly such a thing had been accomplished. She at last looked away, further down the lane, as the woman and her man walked arm in arm. They were endeavoring to each lead the other safely through the unnatural fog. The man could have been Jonathan’s brother, for upon moving closer she saw they had the same nose and hair. 

As she set upon him, she decided she was incorrect. They didn’t have the same shocked expressions or manner. Mina gently and silently pulled him into the nearest doorway, down seven steps on a little set of stairs. It was barely out of sight, had the day been clear. With the weather they created, it would go unseen for a time.

She locked eyes with him, even as she wanted to rush into this. She successfully calmed him into a stupor to her own satisfaction. It was similar to one such as she had seen on Jonathan’s face when the Count bent him to his will.

She nodded, for this was perfect. She bent over his throat, and set to work with this feast, but managed to restrain herself. If need be, she would help Lucy with the other one.

The woman walked on without her companion a few more steps. She hadn’t felt the breeze as he was taken from her side. In a heart’s beat, Lucy was before her. The woman was startled at a body emerging from the mist like a ghost, and almost fell. Lucy steadied her.

As the woman looked beside her, and then backwards, suddenly knowing she was alone, she saw the man limp at Mina’s feet. She could only see so much, as the mist was allowed to reveal the truth of her plight. “Gerard,” she weakly moaned. She saw the blood on Mina’s face. She fainted into Lucy’s arms.

“Was that me or you?” Mina wondered. She had certainly never fainted when she was aiding Jonathan in his recovery in the aftermath! Or when she brought Lucy home after her adventure in the night.

“It was both and neither,” Lucy laughed coquettishly. “It was the sight of dear Gerard upon your face. Finish him, and we’ll see about her.” It didn’t take long, and she asked her next question. “Are you too full for her?”

Mina shook her head. “She is to be _our_ dessert, Lucy. I only have room for a bit more, and I cannot have more than you!” She laughed at the strangeness of it all. “We shall drink together, as feels only proper.” She held up a hand to stop her. “First, I should like to learn her name.”

“Because we know his?” Lucy found a sport in it. “It is only proper, as introductions were not complete!” Dear Gerard was slumped half on the cobblestone, but just far enough onto the footpath that he wouldn’t be trampled. He was close to the entryway of a ramshackle shop. His body was gradually cooling. There was no way that he could educate them on the subject.

It had been a lovely night before they deemed to intrude upon it. A horse and carriage passed, it’s clomping down the cobblestone street muted by the atmosphere. Their prey had been lucky not to be trampled before they met their fangs. The driver was blind to anything but where the road was, lest he get into an accident. His horse was briefly upset by the presence of the supernatural, but soon calmed; it and the driver continued on their way, oblivious to the dead and endangered.

They had made good manners into the darkest of games. Mina trusted that Jonathan would have played his own sporting match with his selection of person by now. Surely the Count would be proud of them, for they had not drawn too much attention!

Mina stroked the woman’s cheek, once she had arranged her dress so that she could kneel alongside her. The street was wet, but it was their fault for being so enthusiastic with this. “Wake up,” she softly urged. “We have a question for you, Miss. Wake up, and look into my eyes. All will be calm within you. There is no need to scream tonight,” she purred. She looked to be about twenty, if she was right. They could have been schoolmates. “What is your name?”

The woman’s eyes fluttered open obediently. “Moira,” she breathed. “Did you kill him? Did you kill my brother?”

Mina smiled, glancing over her shoulder at Lucy. “He was not your sweetheart, Miss Moira?” She sat back. “No, but I can see the family resemblance in your eyes now that you speak of it.” She had one hand on Moira’s shoulder and stroked a finger down her neck. “Yes, Moira,” whispered. “I did kill him, and you truly should not suffer another instant without him. I took his life from you. Lucy and I shall both take yours.”

Without another word, without a scream, without further disturbances, Lucy and Mina were latched onto each side of her throat. They drank, sharing the woman’s blood until Moira’s body sagged, lifeless. She was placed under a rose bush, because the other bush had no further space for corpses. Lucy rose, and held out her arm to Mina. “The hour grows late,” she smiled. “A woman could be set upon, unawares, by a madman.”

“So it does; so one could, in fact,” Mina smiled. She was breathing heavily, though she didn’t need to. It was exquisite to taste. She wound her arm through Lucy’s, and kissed her cheek with a low laugh. “Jack the Ripper may still roam the world. Do let us be off.” She only stopped to wipe away a smear of blood on Lucy’s cheek. “You’re beautiful even now.”

“So are you,” Lucy beamed as they first began to walk, before they broke into a run. They were laughing like children playing a game. All thoughts of Moira and Gerard and the soot covered man vanished in their glee.

Moments later, they became bats that soared through the night. They made haste back to Carfax.

They had decided that they would find themselves many lurid ways to pass the time before Jonathan returned from his appointed errand.


	6. Chapter 6

“John, the words in these pages may be worth many lives,” Van Helsing desperately revealed. He had not been back from his journey for long, before he had gone straight to his friend’s office. “There is but one problem. Do _you_ know the shorthand? Any form of them? I know it not.” He held the diary in his hands, but couldn’t translate it. 

The answers were so close, and yet so far.

“I used to know one form, but I am rather rusty,” Seward apologetically admitted. He preferred his phonograph to writing things down. Even as he spoke, other matters distracted him. He had been endeavoring to locate Hennessey all day, to no avail. What the devil could be keeping him from his appointed rounds well into the night? One of the patients required him, but he had vanished and left them mildly short staffed.

“Show me?” He asked at last, with an apology in his eyes. He took the book as Van Helsing slid it over. He slowly turned each page, noting the way it was penned, in addition to how much or how little was familiar to him. He finally looked up, and shook his head. “A few abbreviations are familiar, but I don’t know the whole of it.”

Then, he hit upon an idea. He knew someone that fancied such penmanship! “One of Renfield’s attendants may know; there is a man by the name of Simmons. That one takes notes when I am interviewing patients, and translates a few other forms than the standard. Ask him,” he suggested.

He closed the diary and passed it back to the man.

“I shall indeed,” Van Helsing acknowledged as he left it on the table for a moment. This was one step in the right direction. “I leave it with you until you stumble across him?”

The man himself knocked on the door moments later, and Seward rose to meet him. Before he could ask about translations, however, the bad news had begun to be unfurled. “You said it was acceptable for your Lord Godalming to speak to your patient alone, like that one called on him earlier?”

Seward warily nodded. Simmons meant Van Helsing earlier, for he had indeed spoken with Renfield alone. He did allow Arthur the same now. “There’s a commotion,” Simmons continued. “There’s a disturbance down there, and Maxwell said your friend’s needin’ help!”

He didn’t get to say anything further, as his friend bolted by them both. Van Helsing only stopped long enough to grab Quincey’s arm as he passed, and continued to drag the man along in his wake.

Seward picked up the diary, which had been left behind. Maxwell was Renfield’s secondary attendant. He pushed the book to Simmons’ chest and before leaving the office stated his instructions. “See if you can translate that while we’re with him! Let me know how long it will take!”  
\--

Attendants and doctors went to rooms further away, and Jonathan listened. He filtered out the wails of the unhinged. He pushed the concern for subterfuge aside, and felt himself thinking in a new manner. It felt natural to him now. He focused on the broken mind before him where he watched, and pushed. He wanted to laugh in delight when the other man jerked.

Renfield was lured to the window by scratching sounds, and a distant tug. He knew that sensation inside his skull! He knew he had set his sparrows free; well, the ones that hadn’t been consumed. None of them would be stupid enough to return. He looked through the bars, and met eyes that glowed a brighter red than was natural. He grinned, though he knew this was not the Master. “You aren’t Him,” he said aloud, and it was almost an accusation.

“No,” Jonathan softly noted. “I’m not.” He understood his disappointment.

Renfield felt something enter and entwine with his thoughts. He beheld millions of rats across the lawn, which couldn’t really be there. Not yet. The one looking at him slowly nodded, before words filled his head. **_‘This is only the beginning. My name is Jonathan, and I will bring so many more rodents to your cell. You will have many lives. You can have them in multitudes…if only you let me in. Let your imagination become reality, through me.’_**

“Speak,” Renfield hissed. “Creep not into my head like Him.”

“I came to deliver a promise from Him,” Jonathan lied in a hushed tone at the bars. Speaking by thought felt easier when he wished to avoid detection. “I will deliver unto you the most wonderful of gifts. These were his words. He does so now, through me.” He was _so_ hungry, but he managed to sound sweetly encouraging. “He says it is to be now. It shall be tonight.” He pushed harder at the psyche, showing him the delights he wanted. A sea of rats could be covering the lawn, beneath a blanket of luminous fog.

It _could_ have been real. It didn’t happen yet, for he fretted about losing control of them. Still, he planted the thought that it _had_ occurred, for he had no experience in this regard. “Tell me what you want now,” he bid in hushed tones. “Don’t you want to _feast_ with us? Don’t you want small lives? Don’t you want the _blood_?” _He_ did.

However, he saw that an illusion was not giving him a sporting chance. He would be denied, unless he acted, and so he stretched out his senses and pulled.

The manner in which Jonathan accomplished his goal impressed even the new vampire. He summoned the rats for Renfield, but they were not a meager handful. First, his soundless summons stretched far and wide. With the Count backing him up, he felt no strain; he only felt a dark mirth just itching to burst forth.

Soon, dozens and then hundreds of rats emerged. It quickly grew into the thousands, as they seemed to be pulled from all over the closest areas of London’s suburbs. They emerged from the shadows as one. It was like the reverse of when they fled a sinking ship, Jonathan mused. They leapt over any obstacle, and climbed atop each other.

They were more than he had ever seen walking home late at night.

They were noiseless with his will pressed upon their tiny brains, and it was eerie even to a vampire. At each quiet mental command, they leapt ever higher. A few gained purchase with their claws and scrambled up, running across Jonathan’s feet where he was perched. He shoved away the one that went from there to his shoulders, before he resumed grasping the bars as tightly as he dared. He locked eyes with Renfield again, and saw only hope. 

He chose not to say his next temptations aloud, no matter what he had been instructed by Renfield. _**‘All these lives can be yours. Let me in, and these little ones will be your companions; they will be your feast; they shall be only what you wish them to be, with His blessings.’**_

“You _are_ His,” Renfield breathlessly managed to stammer out in reply. He was awestruck as he continued. “You _are_ like Him! I knew He would come in some form. I never doubted it.” 

Jonathan’s grin was cold. He waited quietly, and only stroked the cool bars once, scratching a claw down the middle. He ignored the fact that three rats were gnawing at his pants. It wouldn’t do to break his gaze.

“Come in! You must, oh, you must,” Renfield insisted.

That was all Jonathan had hoped for tonight as he shook the rats loose. He brushed away the rats as they swarmed into his lap; a gesture halted the approach of leagues more than he could have conceived or properly handled. If he were still human, he knew he would be on his guard and fleeing in the face of so many. He didn’t wish for them to swarm into the sparse quarters.

He was grateful for the Count’s tutelage. “I must, and I _shall_ ,” he murmured.

Jonathan’s fangs glinted in the artificial light that streamed in from the hall. Instead of crawling inside like a lizard, as he had seen the Count do once, he chose another manner of transportation. His body slowly dissolved into mist, breaking up until only flaming eyes hovered gently in the heart of it. He closed those eyes, so that Renfield couldn’t know his exact location and try something.

He slid forward, passing through the bars and feeling no pressure or weight against what was once his body. He reformed in the center of the room, still and silent. Inwardly, he was surprised it had gone so well, but his hunger was also growing out of hand. He felt something within him twisting, desperate to be sated. He had to continue with the façade, or this man would, perhaps, scream. He couldn’t have that, though the insane were unpredictable.

Jonathan edged closer. "Have you not worshipped Him from afar, Mr. Renfield? Do you not desire and deserve the greatest of rewards for your devotion?" He had found the name through his Master. 

His feast would not be interrupted once he had a taste of living blood on his tongue, or even warming his throat. He reached out a hand as though to entreat Renfield. “What is your answer to be, Mr. Renfield? What do you say to your sovereign?”

"I am His even now," Renfield happily agreed. "The time is nigh, but I know when someone is to be worshipped...and when someone is lying like the doctors here." He paused. “Yes,” Renfield added with a strange laugh. “Give me my reward. Bring Him to me.”

“Of course you wish to join Him,” Jonathan soothed as he drew closer. It was difficult to continue to speak of him as Renfield did, but he would indulge the man. He nudged a spider; he was pleased that his power repelled it. He would not be covered them, even if there were an army of arachnids. It seemed, though, that Renfield had let his pets go, or eaten them in preparation for this night. This one could be a coincidence.

“What of your morsels?” He smiled almost kindly as he continued, more out of curiosity than anything darker. “Do you set the last of them free? Will you rule over them? They will find you grand. I’m told you may covet their lives now, but I _know_ you _won’t_ crave them _later_.”

“They’ll be freed when I ascend?” Renfield wondered. “I have a select few left beneath the bed.”

So they had not all been released! He was surprised the flies did not buzz constantly in his ears. “Will they?” Jonathan replied, as though he cared for their fate. He touched the man’s shoulder, gesturing for him to sit. He remained standing instead. Jonathan was paying more attention to satisfying his own needs than to the other man’s state of mind. He didn’t see that Renfield’s expression had grown closed and dangerous.

He was too fixated on getting Renfield where he wanted him, fooling him, and then placing him in the perfect moment of groveling terror if he could, so that he might easily move in for the kill.

Renfield suddenly began to smile like a pretty maiden hearing sweet nothings whispered into her ears for the first time by a new admirer, and knew Jonathan was fooled by the platitudes. Until he eased closer, that was his intention. And when he spoke, he knew to do so quietly, lest he rouse an orderly away from their appointed rounds.

“You offend my sensibilities, good sir,” he declared in the same manner. He reached over and quickly touched the other man’s cold face, knowing what had once been behind those eyes. Jonathan shoved his hand down with incredible speed. “Master _Jonathan Harker_ Isn’t that right? You were only beside me but once, just before your excursion, in Mr. Hawkins’ offices. But you don’t remember, do you? You stated your first name, and I remembered!”

He continued, once he had savored the vampire’s surprise. “I, at the cusp of my particular worries, and you at the cusp of changing into a new man, vibrant and far too excited at a change in vocation to pay me much mind.”

Jonathan stepped away, inadvertently becoming enamored by this minor detail. What had been his business with Mr. Hawkins? He had been leaning closer to that man’s throat. He finally only shook his head slowly. This was a distraction. “I was. I must have been,” he concluded.

He was in the process of growing fascinated, though his Master’s voice began to creep back through his mind. **_‘Finish this, Jonathan.’_** It grew steadily louder, urging him to stick to the proper course. 

He shouldn’t waver, or linger too long. He must do this, and drink deeply and gladly, and return to the Count’s side forthwith. It didn’t matter if he had seen him as a mortal, for Jonathan was no longer that. The Count was wiser; Jonathan would heed him.

“No. Within your eyes is another man now,” Renfield whispered, as he continued. “I wanted Him to be _my_ Master, but so He became _yours_. I can see the signs as another voice whispers that none but you can hear!” He failed at suppressing a laugh, but nobody would be drawn by such a thing. “I know you whisper pretty lies confidently, all changed and new. You are listening to Him, are you not? They are your lies and His, intertwined?”

Jonathan’s voice was at the precipice of imperious when he answered. “Does it matter that you were not the first? Or shall not be the last?” He shook his head, before he tried to return to what he considered the more comforting attitude. “Come closer, Mr. Renfield. You need not _live_ behind these bars, when your fellow vermin…the rats I bring you by way of Him…are just beyond.” 

He need not live, period.

Renfield fell silent, still turned away. He reached for his little book full of the calculations of lives consumed. Jonathan presumed this was just a madman's way of cleaning house before he chastised him further, and would wait it out with all his strength.

The book was tossed at his feet, and Jonathan glanced down. Was he meant to care that it was thrown? Did he intend to regale him with stories of each fly swallowed, or each spider cultivated?

Every instinct cried out for caution. Even in Jonathan’s superior state, he sensed it in the air; _he_ should have been the danger, and he would be when he could ensnare him in a way that was quiet and not liable to rouse the building. 

"Let me have the night," Renfield snarled, though it was a quieter declaration than it could have been. "You'll say nay and deny me," he added with a lightness that was different than before. "I know what you truly wish for me. Do you know, Mr. Harker? I will _rise_ to the challenge," he concluded as he surged forward and grabbed Jonathan's hand, pressing tight.

It was done as though to beseech the other man to spare him his paltry life. He grasped his hands with both of his own, even as Jonathan planned to bite now. “I shall not go meekly to my demise. I shall take hold to my fate on my terms, whether it be by my Master, you, or by the cool blade of a scalpel,” he hissed close to Jonathan’s ear as he moved without warning. 

Jonathan glimpsed fierce eyes, the unexpected glint of metal, and felt it pierce his dead flesh as sharply as he had hoped to use his fangs to bite through this man. He began hissing even as Renfield slashed the well-hidden blade across Jonathan's hand. Renfield ducked a swipe meant to take his head off, and took a large gulp of what bled freely. He grinned at the snarl, even as Jonathan shoved him to the ground.

Jonathan hadn’t paid him any mind for more than his blood, and his death. His Master’s voice in his mind overcame such folly as distraction, and began to take hold even as the cool blade pierced his palm. 

_Renfield_ was lapping up _his_ blood from the floor. This would not do, Jonathan’s mind screamed. He was merciful enough to send a nudge that eased Renfield to the point that he was meek and harmless as a lamb in his arms.

That was the plan, wasn’t it? If it worked for rats, why shouldn't it work on Renfield?

"God! He made you lie well, but I saw through every deceit, as you’ve not been at this long enough to be believable. Your sin is too new! You wouldn't give His gift--our Master's gift--in honesty, and so I took the magnificence for myself by force," Renfield managed with a beatific expression as he sat on his knees. These words were said proudly.

The blood on Renfield's mouth stirred the fire of Jonathan's hunger. He knew it would take away the annoyance of the blade, and restore him. 

Renfield was pulled higher. Fangs sank deeply into Renfield’s throat, before a gasping noise began. He was trying to speak, and was unable. Out of an evil humor, taking care not to spill any of his meal, Jonathan pulled back. Jonathan wished to hear what pleading might emerge, but Renfield wasn’t calling for help. He didn’t expect that Renfield would even do that in a timely manner. 

“This is…what I wanted,” Renfield wheezed. “You wouldn’t have done it for me, and neither would He. I…know this!”

Renfield was mad, but he was still a threat. He had consumed Jonathan’s blood, and while that might need to be dealt with, Jonathan was in denial. He was also of the opinion that if he bit deeply enough, he would not ever be able to rise from the dirt and become bothersome to anyone.

He clutched the man in what amounted to a bear hug in a living person. Without another moment to delay things, having worked himself into a frenzy, Jonathan bit even deeper than before. He felt the instinct to shake his prey begin to overwhelm him, but that would lead to further damage.

He might only lose blood that way.

The jugular was easy for Jonathan to find. He knew exactly where it was located in his new state. Even if he didn’t, he suspected the Count would be in his head directing him to his goal.

Jonathan _needed_ Renfield's fear, slight though it was at first. It was partially concealed with religious mania. What weeded itself through Jonathan's mind was praise and ideas from his Master, and Jonathan could only obey. If the blood cooled in death, he couldn't partake. Best eat quickly and greedily. He held Renfield tighter, muffled growls being loosed from his throat, unable to be silenced fully.

He thought he felt the man’s spine snap, though he was no doctor. As Renfield slumped at an odd angle, Jonathan followed the body down to the floor and covered it with his own. He didn't realize the sounds of growling had become grunts of pleasure, and couldn't clamp down on them. 

Still alive, though, Jonathan sensed. He could feel the pulse of life in the blood as he clung to him. It grew weaker with each beat of Renfield’s heart. Jonathan almost lost himself to the first meal of his unnatural life. He gulped down the hot nourishment as fast as he could.

It was _ambrosia_.  
\--

Arthur moved quietly, so that he would not disturb another patient with the sound of his boots on the floor. Most of them were sleeping at this hour, but one never knew which patient was so overwrought that the sound could make them worse. He had walked these halls often enough to visit Jack, and had learned that quickly.

Quincey was delayed for some unknown matter, or else he might have joined him. Arthur thought he had seen him skulking about the grounds earlier, keeping an eye out for bats. 

Arthur moved with a stride that told the attendants he had a set goal in mind; from all he was told, and what he had noted when accompanied by Jack, they wouldn’t stop him. Jack had put in a good word for him, and taken the right precautions. A key had been provided for him. They knew his face, and they knew his station. Arthur had earlier been told that he could see Renfield on his own if he felt so inclined. He was inclined to do so now, as he had conjured several questions.

Perhaps he could obtain an answer or two on this night, if he were alone, and not in the presence of someone that might cause Renfield to clam up, as it were. Given the hour, Arthur simply wanted to test a theory and see if being the locus for odd occurrences would induce any clues to pour from his mouth. If anything happened, there was always _someone_ around to hear his screams, even if such outbursts were remarkably common.

Well, that man Simmons was at his post in this particular ward, and knew he was entering. He had waved to him in passing. Arthur wouldn’t be entirely helpless. He had spoken to him once or twice, and the man would surely recognize his voice.

Arthur heard a strange groaning sound, mixed with a moan and a growl emanating from the humble quarters. Such a hullabaloo couldn’t bode well, could it? “Oh, Lord,” he prayed aloud, but quiet, as a thought struck him. “Don’t let him be doing anything obscene with the sparrows again, if he should have gathered more about him. Not while I am in attendance.” He had heard _those_ tales from Jack.

His hand stilled. There was another noise now.

As he turned the key in the lock and began to pull the door open, he realized what the other sound was. It was the sound of a body falling to the ground, and the low growling of an animal. He had been around enough hounds and terriers to know what it sounded like when they were in a foul mood, and wondered in shock at whether he’d found himself with a dog. 

He had the growing suspicion that perhaps Renfield _had_ been given a hound or some other breed of canine as an experiment, in one of Jack’s dottier moments. What was Jack _thinking_?

This was an asylum! It was the height of neglect to give a dog of any sort to a man they knew was capable of devouring them. Should he give a shout for the attendant? No, let him see. Perhaps he could save the poor beast.

He steeled himself for whatever he might see, and opened the door fully. He was half expecting to see a dog at the brink of some monstrous thing, or to be bowled over by a naked madman. He’d heard those stories, too.

His eyes widened as he took in the scene. It wasn’t a sparrow being mistreated or consumed. It wasn’t a hound. It wasn’t Renfield making those noises. Death was either before him, or in the process of occurring, and it left him aghast. He was witnessing a vampire feasting on the blood of the poor man; their bodies were moving together on the floor, though Renfield was no longer participating, if he had ever been. Any of his movements seemed to be caused by whatever that one atop him was doing as he clutched the still form.

It was far worse than anything Arthur could have possibly imagined. Renfield was on the ground, and based on the utter lack of breath causing his chest to rise and fall that Arthur could immediately see, he was either quite certifiably dead, or so close as to make very little difference in the end. A vampire was crouched low over him, clutching the body tightly, possessively. He heard a sick crunching noise of bone grinding together.

“Merciful God,” Arthur breathed. He knew he shouldn’t draw attention to himself, but the words fell automatically from his lips.

Lips still heavily daubed in blood, Jonathan’s own head sprang up. He spread himself over the body, protective of what was _his_ first victim. It was _his_ first meal, and no one in this world would take it from him. Not if they wanted to live to see another day. He snarled. The growl that emanated from him made it evident that he would tear this interloper apart if he lingered too long.

He had the Count’s blessing to kill any that intruded, and Jonathan tensed, ready to pounce before he looked away.

He made one last frenzied check of his food first. Jonathan felt a subtle change in his prey; despite Arthur’s interference and presence, he leaned his ear close to Renfield’s mouth. He both heard and smelled the final thin wheeze of life as it was extinguished. He inhaled deeply, and could only find the scent of death. Renfield’s heart had ceased to beat. Jonathan smiled, for little to no blood had been wasted. The body could be discarded without him feeling regretful to have lost anything.

He had determined that there was neither life nor blood left to procure from inside those veins. He would lose nothing from this distraction.

The creature began a swift transition from a humming noise of pleasure to a growl that Arthur had heard wolves emit before they went in for the kill. Those eyes! They were like Lucy’s in the graveyard, when she tried to draw him to her; they were the same sort as when she had been foiled.

The cold-bloodedness now that the blood was at an end was as astounding to Arthur as it was terrifying. The sounds coming from this man were even the same sort he had heard from Lucy in the graveyard before her escape.

Arthur realized this was a being that cared only for the kill; as it stared at his throat with eyes like hellfire, he realized he may be the next one to die in this cell. He shuddered as the fiend gave an ominous grin. Then, Arthur realized with horror that he _knew_ him. “Jonathan,” he murmured with a quivering voice.

There was baffled malice before it changed to mild recognition; Jonathan merely adapted to the situation readily enough, for he was on his guard. His eyes remained livid as he stared down Arthur.

Arthur had realized that he had met this one before, when he was but a man, in passing. Arthur backed into the corner carefully, away from the route that would leave him open to attack, since he’d already made a mistake by walking away from the doorway completely.

He had met him, with his fiancée, when Lucy had her last birthday party. His mind reverberated with continued horror at the fact it truly was her last one. It was before he or Quincey or Jack had ever proposed. He and Jonathan were both out of their element at such a celebration, as Lucy and her best friend had moved off to be alone and laugh and speak of private matters. That man had been far more concerned with an exam and his future than he was in sticking out like a sore thumb.

That quaint and dedicated young man _couldn’t_ be this one, but the horror was revealed to him.

Arthur winced as Jonathan rose and dropped the body without care following one last slow lick at the throat in a pointed manner. “Jonathan,” he repeated, satisfied. This time, it was said in recognition that it was indeed who he believed it to be. He locked eyes with him, and Arthur held up his cross with both hands, just in case he tried to do what Lucy had, holding it steadily at neck level. The response was a violent flinch and hiss, before he recovered.

Jonathan shot him an odd grin, tilting his head with a chuckle. He shoved the corpse away without care as he moved to his feet in one quick motion. “That is my name,” he slowly said with a growling undertone. He was still reacting to the pain inflicted by the cross. He gave another huff of a laugh at this strangest of meeting places, and his eyes were bright. He was drunk on his first meal.

Jonathan seemed nonplussed, before he in a burst he connected the face to how he would have met him before. “Arthur. Yes,” he purred as though it were obvious the whole time. “Come closer.” When the human pulled the cross on a chain ever higher and then stepped hesitantly forward one pace, Jonathan roared and turned away, briefly covering his face.

Arthur immediately returned to his previous location, not knowing what to do.

Jonathan looked back suspiciously, but Arthur did no more than that. Jonathan’s smile, when it came, was vicious. That cross was a new pain for him, and it was not going to happen again, he vowed to himself. He desired to play with _his_ mind. “Lucy sends her regards,” he laughed at last, opening his arms. Being linked to the Count, he was linked to Lucy. He knew of current events; he knew of their last meeting in the graveyard. “Our new Lord does _not_. Who shall I heed more?”

They heard the pounding of feet down the hallway, as those that were late made haste to get to the room. Jonathan wouldn’t be caught and killed on his very first night, though. Growling loudly in frustration despite his all-encompassing joy whenever he turned his eyes to the body on the floor, he began to put his mind to work solving the riddle of how best to escape. 

Jonathan stepped backwards a pace. He locked eyes with Arthur even as he smirked. Let him know something of what was in store, for Jonathan’s eyes began to change before the rest of him could.

Arthur gasped, and had nowhere to hide. He had never witnessed such a spectacle as this. The trio finally made it into the room. “Don’t move!” Arthur urged them. This was precarious. Jonathan was becoming something that Arthur couldn’t describe. It wasn’t a bat, as Lucy had become.

The three men did as they were ordered, with Van Helsing still half in the hall. He began digging in his coat pocket for a crucifix. He found it at last.

“ _In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum suum_!” Van Helsing pronounced firmly and with great heat as he crossed closer to Jonathan’s radius wherein there was the greatest danger of being attacked. “Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend _his_ spirit,” he translated, in case the understood English would harm him more. He had to get Arthur a chance to escape, for Jonathan had made a threatening movement towards the young man. This Jonathan had fed, so it could only be malicious mischief now. 

As Van Helsing spoke the words, so, too, did he fling most of the contents of a vial of holy water he kept on his person. This prayer would be for Van Helsing both a shield, as well as his spear. It would carry his faith and strike the undead. It would protect Quincey, while he saw to Arthur’s recovery and ushered him from the room. It would protect Van Helsing by the very utterance of the words, for however brief a time. It would also harm this one—once a young man, but now a newly created nosferatu; he was merely a creature of darkness and not to be trifled with—and drive him back.

“You will not cross this threshold; you will harm neither us, nor other patients,” Van Helsing forcefully declared as he held up his crucifix ever higher. There would be no angle that Jonathan did not see it. His words were directed to this one alone when he said the prayer. It was this one whom had struck a killing blow with his intrusion. 

If he could injure and contain the fiend before it escaped as either mist or a bat, he would be able to declare this a win for their side. They could subdue the wretch. They could drive a stake through its heart and take any further precautions they deemed necessary to stomp this scourge from the face of the earth.

This once Jonathan—for it could only be he, he knew—was now but a nameless monster in Van Helsing’s eyes. And so the prayer must strike at the heart of his very being, judging by the frenzied stare around the room as his eyes rolled in shock in the aftermath. There was a short-lived but piercing cry that sounded more like a beast than a man. Those eyes, however, grew cunning and Van Helsing tensed as he waited for more to occur.

For Jonathan, each word of a prayer felt like the stab of a knife through his gut and head and heart. He ached through the marrow of his bones. As the words completed, he felt like he was being punctured by a million white hot needles; he wanted to attack the Professor to stop him from causing him such pain again.

There would be a physical change into something as vicious as he was required to be in order to protect himself. He knelt down until he was on all fours, smiling like a creature from the pits of hell; claws burst through his shoes, and replaced his toenails. His hands and what body that could be seen outside of clothing became covered in a light fur. With claws on both his feet and hands, Jonathan could tear them apart if he couldn’t escape. With more fangs, he could rip and rend ever more deeply.

The features were next. 

The water struck Jonathan’s arm, distracting him from the process. It provoked further snarls, and a muted yelp before a change came over the features that now—to the horror of the living—pulsed, bulging, and then at last began to alter fully into another creature. Jonathan would not become mist alone or stay halfway between forms, no.

Jonathan shifted with increasing rapidity as anguish spurred him on. An end was in sight. The nose quickly elongated into a muzzle, and the two simple fangs grew further and became a mouth filled with them. A grunt became a roar. 

Jonathan wished to give Arthur a sight to behold; he wished to leave him with something that he would never, ever forget. He blamed him for bringing help; he blamed him for this pain. His hunger made him beastly, did it? It was an inspiration as well!

Muscle and bone twisted and realigned in a grotesque manner before their very eyes; Van Helsing snapped out of his awestruck shock, and splashed the last of the water onto the beast’s flank. 

“Mein Gott!” Van Helsing breathed at the end; he barely managed to keep his hand steady as he held his crucifix. While Jonathan focused on him, focused on the searing pain of that moment, and was only deterred by the faith of his crucifix, Quincey could reach Arthur.

It was exactly the distraction Quincey required to usher his friend to safety; he seized his moment, and was successful. They reached the hall where Seward waited. They watched Van Helsing, hopeful that this would not be their downfall.

Van Helsing stepped further back, for before him now stood an overly large wolf with glowing red eyes. Those demonic eyes moved over the face of each man as teeth were bared, and even without spoken or mental words the threat was clear. If they hunted him, they would come away maimed; if they followed him, those teeth would rip their throats out, and their blood would likely be drained. 

Or, perhaps, they would instead be changed so that they might become like him in response.

Jonathan shook himself in a full body shudder in his wolf form. As he found both a renewed sense of purpose in the viciousness, he also grasped tightly to the mental thread where the Count both observed and directed a few of Jonathan’s movements. Jonathan’s hackles rose as he backed up. His tail, having gone betwixt his legs in anguish at the holiness thrust at him even as it sprouted, now rose as he prepared to move in for the kill.

They were only veins and meat to soothe a beast’s hunger. They had caused him a measure of pain, no matter how fleeting; the wounds were already healing, for he had dined heavily on this night. He would do so much worse in retaliation if he had both chance and permission. Jonathan moved as though he would lunge for Van Helsing in particular, before intelligence and cunning dominated him and shone from his eyes. 

Before, the only thing that could be seen was pure unadulterated instinct. He paused as a warning from his true Master reached him; he knew what he should do.

Three words reverberated through his skull before he ever struck. _**‘Return to me.’**_ The Count wanted him to retreat.

He showed the man his fangs; it was a promise to feast upon _him_ if they met again. 

His progress would be guided by the Count’s vigilant mind. Any downswing of his energy, of his power as a result of his newness would be bolstered by him so that he would not lose a newborn to the stake. It thrilled Jonathan as much as the blood had.

Jonathan knew that he must escape while he still had the upper hand, and none knew his destination. He would not be captured; he would not betray anyone; he would run free. He must escape, while he himself had not been given further injuries that might not heal so quickly. Jonathan sprang towards the barred window. 

As his wolf form surged for the bars, it was simultaneously becoming an amalgam of mist and beast. It sailed through without incident, almost as transparent as a ghost. As he left, two of the men did their best to climb up on the bed to see where he went; Van Helsing remained where he was, while Seward remained with the body.

Van Helsing tucked the crucifix and now empty vial neatly into his satchel. “A simple prayer brings discomfort to the devil’s spawn; as you see, the holy water causes worse, though brief.”

The wolf that was Jonathan managed the long plummet easily in that insubstantial form. He became solid at the last, landing on all fours with a muted thump. He crouched low, his flaming red eyes locked first on Arthur, and then Quincey as his curious face appeared alongside him. He would include whoever dared to observe him. The threat was clear, as his fangs bared in a snarl, before he threw his head back and howled.

Most of the rats remained on the lawn as Jonathan landed in his wolf form. They never made a sound. They did not touch him, for he did not wish it. They sensed a predator despite the dark power at work, and would have scrambled to escape if he didn’t control them. Instead, an empty circle free of their squirming masses began to form, with one opening in sight.

It was just as _he_ wished. They would soon disperse, but for now they were still useful. Let them become his camouflage. Jonathan knew when the men saw the creatures, for there was a sharp cry from the one he supposed was almost certainly Arthur.

As Jonathan loped away with ever increasing speed, the rats snapped free of his power and began to squeal. With his influence severed, they returned to the shadows. Their eyes could no longer be seen lighting up the night once five minutes had passed.

That howl was a menacing sound to the ears of the men, filled with the victory of a first night’s kill. There was something unnatural to the tone. It echoed, even as the creature itself vanished into yet more fog that began rolling in. The rats, however, were unexpected. They had never seen so many of them gathered together outside of tales of plague ships.

They wondered if the rats were in the building, and prayed the answer was no if the creatures were easy for a vampire to command. Seward wondered if the rats already in the building had gone out to meet and mate with those that gathered, and if they were soon to be overrun in a short time with their newborn pups.

One crisis at a time, he chastised himself.

Quincey was the first to dare to break the silence that fell in the aftermath of the noise. “So. You weren’t bitten?” He asked Arthur as he moved closer to see for himself. “She got the other guy but good, after all.”

Arthur slowly shook his head as they stepped off the bed. Did he look bitten? Well, he must have seemed rather pale after all of that. “I walked in on that,” he noted faintly. "I thought Renfield might have an animal in here, and might have done something ghastly to it…I don’t know what I would have done to stop him if he had sought to harm a dog. That man...he had his fangs in his throat,” he said as his voice broke in shock at what might have been. “I met him during _the day_ ; I met him once, when he was as alive as you or I. A few short months ago, he was at Lucy’s birthday celebration.”

Then, he paused and shook his head after glancing at the window. “My terriers wouldn’t have won that battle,” Arthur guessed with a shaking voice. They were wonderful at killing rats of particular sizes for sport, but would have been quite overwhelmed and devoured here.

“Human, then, but just became nosferatu,” Van Helsing agreed as he ignored the last comment. “He was famished,” he noted, now that he had finally gotten a good look at the state of Renfield’s throat. There was a spot where it was gnawed, before the bite was cleaner. “He is truly a newborn, and was not certain of his power at first. You are certain of his name?”

If so, this was but another confirmation of the man’s fate. In the heat of battle, he himself had felt certain that it was he.

“Jonathan Harker,” Arthur disclosed, as he felt his dignity was returning. One could only cower in horror for so long. “Did you know him, too, Professor? Before all of this?”

“We learn from failure,” Van Helsing said, repeating his old adage. He sighed, before he admitted the truth to them. “Our Miss Lucy wrote to a Miss Mina Murray in her letters. You know I barred myself in a room to read. Mina wrote of going to collect her missing fiancé from brain fever. She spoke of marriage and happiness and Lucy’s future, not knowing her friend’s new state of being.”

“Mina Murray _Harker_ ,” Arthur realized. How could he have been so dense? Was he just wrapped up in his own grief? She had married Jonathan after all! He had felt them to be a good match, from the little he saw. “Mina was Lucy’s best friend. Who was bitten first? It wasn’t Jonathan?”

“No, you are off the mark, my boy,” Van Helsing sighed. “Our vampire bit Lucy, and from those letters I feel that a love very strong pulled Lucy and Mina close again. Lucy must have bitten her instead of you, Arthur, or you two, John; Quincey. Either she or this other bit Jonathan. The progenitor from afar is our vampire.”

Arthur ran his hands through his hair, before he cautiously continued. “Based on what was said by him, I will wager that both got to him.” He was uncomfortable with that line of thought. “His Lord or hers, was his phrasing.” After a moment of silence, he said, almost hysterically, “I do shudder to think what flowed in Renfield's blood.”

"Sedatives six hours ago; spiders a few hours after, and sparrows a few days prior," Seward said with a certain grim humor. Normal food would not have entered that man’s bloodstream.

He shook himself of that mood. “The sedatives were long out of his system, so Jonathan shall not be so easy to track." His eyes returned to Renfield, and he waited to understand. "Renfield did something at the end,” Seward softly concluded from where he sat down beside Renfield’s body. They all turned to see him looking half devastated at the loss of his pet madman. “Professor, look at his face.”

“’And prove the very truth he most abhorred.’ Is that not what your Lord Byron said, John?” Van Helsing asked as they hovered over the corpse of Renfield. He no longer needed to direct John’s gaze towards the blood on the mouth, for he had discovered it. 

Seward’s argumentative nature was briefly quelled by tonight’s revelations. He understood what Van Helsing was implying. Having seen the vampire’s work in person, he could only nod solemnly and let the course of events proceed as they may. He had seen the fangs on both Lucy and Jonathan, and heard the ungodly snarling.

There were no doubts at Lucy’s resurrection, just as there was no doubt upon witnessing the transformations from man into both a wolf and mist, leaving not a drop of blood behind in his carnage. Or at least very little, Seward realized. Surely what _was_ there had been _caused_ by Renfield, and not spilled by _Jonathan_ , based on the discovery of the blade.

They heard another howl echo through the night and didn’t move again until it ended. It was further away that time, and the sound was different. 

“Someone’s excited, and in a mood to celebrate it,” Quincey noted, though not as wryly as it might have been, in another situation.

“Joyous,” Arthur agreed uncomfortably. “Could we track him by that one?”

Seward looked up from closing Renfield’s eyes, very focused on the task at hand. “We don’t have to. I think I know where that was; it’s the only place they could be. It’s where Renfield always went to find his ‘Master,’ late at night during his escapes, just beyond the woods.” He sighed in frustration. “Do you remember the date it was that I told you, Professor? It’s lost in the cylinders of my phonograph.”

Van Helsing shook his head, before he raised his hand for patience. “I went to the home of the Harkers, freshly inherited as I was told,” he admitted now. “A telegram was in the foyer, from me. It was never opened, so perhaps there was not time. She never knew of Lucy’s death. There is the possibility they were killed the night before that morning that I went to see, piecing it all together. Always one step behind, thanks to a lame horse and bad weather.”

They didn’t have to ask him who they were behind, for even without a name they knew. “Yes, friend John. I remember the exact date. I'll help to find it."

“Where, Jack? Where are they?” Arthur broke in. They had to put Lucy and these others to rest!

“Carfax,” Seward noted in disgust, before he realized they didn’t know the residence. “Carfax is an abbey, which has not seen a soul willing to purchase it until now. A Romanian nobleman was the rumor I heard as to the buyer, though that was merely gossip,” Seward candidly explained. Tales of ghosts wandering the ruins chased potential investors away, and his own asylum certainly did not do the real estate market any favors.

Seward turned his studious gaze from the body before him back to his friends, and then retained the demeanor of one trying to solve a mystery. He noted the blood on Renfield’s lips, and would get to that in a minute. “Now I know the sort of person—the sort of hellish abomination that has conceded to being my neighbor. Carfax houses demons these days, whereas it once housed monks in a bygone age.”

Oh, what horrors had those walls been privy to since their foe took up residence?

Was the thing that replaced his beloved— _Arthur’s_ beloved Lucy there? He firmly corrected himself, so that he would not cause a squabble when the courting was long since over. Did that diabolical facsimile dance and laugh and cavort for evil and vile reasons within those halls? Was the inner vivaciousness gone, or was she still a mass of contradictions and entertaining as ever?

He missed her.

No. He must stop himself. It wouldn’t do to fall down that rabbit hole. He felt Art’s hand on his shoulder in a conciliatory gesture, and realized just how angrily he was regarding the view of Carfax. He was glaring at the residence itself as though it was the cause of his anguish. Art might have picked up on his palpable grief, as well.

A vampire was the cause, not the building. He patted the other man’s hand to let him know he would be well in time. Finally, he turned from the sight of it and resumed piecing together the facts of the final conundrum that Renfield would ever cause.

It was better to aid his friends and stop this, than it was to wallow in his own misery.

“Then let’s go get ‘em,” Quincey urged with renewed vigor. He saw the expression of doubt on his friend's face, and wanted to pry him from it.

Van Helsing disagreed. “He drank of his blood, forcibly, did he not, John?” He held up the blade as a reminder, and held it out to the doctor.

“Poor devil,” Quincey murmured. The grin on the dead man’s face, however, struck a nerve after all that the American had just seen. It was a contradiction to him.

“Soon to be one,” Van Helsing estimated, now that he and Seward had discussed the blood on the mouth. “We cherish these final moments as long as he is dead, for he will be rising again.” He turned back to Seward. “Have you privacy for our grisly deed? Somewhere soundproof would be adequate to our purposes.”

“He stole another blade; this time, a scalpel,” Seward bemoaned. “This Jonathan was there for both his blood and his life, so Renfield chose to consume the vampire’s first!” Why did this keep happening? How did his patients keep finding weapons?

“He sealed his fate, and thereby made himself as they are, if his master was against such a thing,” Van Helsing agreed. “And against this Jonathan’s desires if he drank of Renfield beyond the last drop. All is pale and bloodless in him, far worse than Lucy. And his back or his neck is broken as you move him about, see? The head flops. He or his master was angered. Perhaps both.”

“I have in my satchel the letters between the two women, as I said. Madam Mina’s diary is in the hands of Simmons; you’ve seen that, John,” he said now. “After this work is complete, we each read letters for clues before the morning; we sift through whatever Simmons can translate before we leave.” Van Helsing’s head whirled with new emotion as they drew closer to striking their foe from the book of life.

Never by night. None would survive the strength of four vampires when they were awake by night. Their butcher’s work required them to be still and not to fight them, and such was not to be until daylight broke. One newborn had murdered Mr. Renfield in this manner, and become both wolf and mist with no effort.

What could three newborns and an ancient one do before them, if cornered? It was best that it be as they slept that they were dealt with.

Seward swallowed as he wondered where they could perform this deed. “The padded rooms, but they are in use.” He rubbed his face, trying to think. It was just like Lucy not actually being in the coffin when she should have been. It felt like a demented riddle. He dreaded the idea of Renfield being that. Zoophagy was bad enough!

Even when it was fascinating, and led Seward to a grand chase to catch him, it was still horrendous.

Seward pondered his options, before he began nodding with determination. “I have been moving patients out of the east wing, so that it can be repaired. The roof has a very persistent leak in a particular spot. The bars are rusty and coming loose, and I feared others would follow in Renfield’s footsteps and reach the civilized men and women in London, who simply don’t know how to handle them.” 

A moment’s silence followed, before he admitted that it wasn’t truly deserted. “Two insensate women are lost in their own worlds, and have yet to be moved. They shouldn’t cause us trouble,” he finished.

“I’ll fetch a gurney and a sheet,” Quincey offered. He would wait for people to look the other way, and steal one. “Got more of that water?” He asked Van Helsing.

Van Helsing gave him a slow smile. “In my coat pocket, thrown over the back of a chair in friend John’s office. It will be retrieved.” 

With that, they set to work.  
\--

The savagery of Jonathan’s first kill had made the bestial transformation as instinctual as it was favorable; otherwise, he would have become a bat and slashed their faces until there was nothing left of them but bloody ribbons.

No matter how events transpired or realigned, Jonathan would be resourceful. Jonathan had proven himself _victorious_. He had fulfilled his solemn promise, and done what he had set out to do. He had done as he had been bidden, and he had fed well. Now, he could rest. He was sated and power— _life_ —coursed through his cold veins.

When he reached Carfax, even before he transformed back into a man, he was giddy. He whined in his animal form, for the noise simply could not be confined any longer.

This was incredible! He wanted to always feel like this, and watch Mina and Lucy do the same. It was a shame he couldn’t have gone on their hunt, but he might have made a botch of things with his searing need. To hell with it, he decided. Jonathan was far enough away and still in this shape, that it felt natural. 

He howled, prolonged and greedy even before he slowly became a man. He put a stop to it before the howls became transmuted into mere screams.

Jonathan changed back into a man first too slow, and glared darkly over his shoulder as the change sped up and he looked more like himself. Fur vanished, and he could see his skin again as he shook himself. No, he wouldn’t have been followed. He knew that, but it was still something he wondered.

The rats and the fog would have prevented the people. He had smelled the fear in his animal shape just as much as this one.

He resisted succumbing to exorbitant, overwhelmed laughter. He shook his arms and legs to rid himself of a tingling sensation; he was pleased that the transformation back was easy at this moment. There was no pain, and little doubt as he crouched near a bush. There was only joy beyond anything he had ever felt before, and a need to chase the prey _he_ chose next.

He felt his Master’s touch, even now, and shivered in delight.

Why had he fought to cling to his old life before? Why had he stayed in bed? Yes, yes, he was sick and ill, but he could have crawled away. Why had he been afraid in the castle? His true self had only been delayed in its birth for fear. Still—beneath it all, he knew that he desired to learn as much as he could about law and the realm of the solicitor, but it wasn’t as urgent as it had been. Even undead, it could have its uses.

There was time to spare. The compulsion to study was still there, tucked away. It would always be there, but it was muted by his acts on this night. It would be diluted until he was fully rested from this hunt, and calmed down.

It was time to go inside, and see what would come next.

He turned back towards Carfax, and peered into the darkness that clung to the broken, yet auspicious site of his rebirth. He knew just where the chapel should reside. Hadn’t he said that to Lucy? His Master would be proud, Jonathan hoped. He chose not to enter by the door, but instead the manner in which _he_ had entered parts of the castle, as now it was an option. It would be more of a climb, and more of a thrill than scaling the asylum had been. He could feel as the _Count_ had felt.

He needed to stop calling him Master in his thoughts before he spoke with him face to face. Though the man was likely already privy to the meddlesome problem of Jonathan’s innermost feelings. He had crafted them and drawn them out, after all.

Jonathan took in the height of it. Then, he grasped the stone, and moved upwards in the manner of a lizard, just as he had observed—or, perhaps, he reflected, a gargoyle given the surroundings. One window was already open for him, so he merely crawled through it backwards to give himself a better dismounting.

Jonathan noted that it was a bit like being one of Renfield’s spiders, too, in the way he did this. He marveled in how this power made it so much easier to adjust. So, too, did the newly slaked thirst. He was glad to be alone when he resumed standing up straight. He felt so full of life; there was so much energy filling him. He spun once in a circle, and licked his lips again before he quickly checked.

No, he was still alone. Nobody had entered while he was throwing aside his qualms. He touched his lips, then. It had been such a delicious taste, that he wondered if it was because it was his first, or because madmen tasted sweeter. 

_The blood is the life._

It had been Renfield’s final thought. Jonathan had caught it like a butterfly in a net, but still agreed with its pronouncement with a wicked grin. “The blood _is_ the life, Mr. Renfield,” Jonathan murmured with a quiet laugh. He mustn’t disturb the others; he was not conversing with a ghost, after all. He was merely reflecting on an interesting memory.

He was only agreeing with the final thought of one so recently departed. It was a thought, which had been so faint that he had almost missed it in his blood fever. He touched his lips again, as he reminisced. His eyes grew brighter still, for he would never forget the taste, or the heavy aroma that accompanied that first wondrous drink.

He shivered at the next door as his hand met it, almost entering before suddenly remembering the Count’s words. He must continue avoiding the inner sanctum that contained crosses, and he would not find pain. He moved onwards at a rapid speed and surveyed the room he now inhabited.

Jonathan glanced down, suddenly recollecting what had instigated that frenzy. His hand was already healed, and the blood that had marred it had disappeared. The incident of the blade would soon be forgotten.

It shouldn’t have been, but it was easy to dismiss.

Jonathan returned to the crypt, and looked around. He was growing tired, and was very full, but he saw the Count watching him. He grasped he was unhappy about something, and sighed. “Are you dissatisfied with my actions? I know you listened to us. You had to, for me to know certain matters. You advised me just as you said you would! I wanted to do your bidding correctly.”

At his expression, he spread his arms. “What did I do wrong, my Lord?”

“Did you feast well?” Dracula asked instead. “You will know all that occurs,” he cryptically added.

Jonathan looked back at him with uncertainty. “As you do, with me?” He asked. “You already knew when I knew what happened with him. He is but a corpse, is he not? I saw to that adequately. I bit through to the bone.”

Dracula stroked his cheek. “Find rest if you are so weary that you cannot see the truth.” 

He was more confused at those words, and shook his head as he opened the lid of the coffin he had chosen. With one last glance, Jonathan moved to climb in, still also partially smug at such a good meal. That couldn’t be taken away.

The Count smiled vaguely. He would consider this a learning experience when the inevitable occurred. “Sleep, then, young fledgling.” The coffin lid remained open, so long as Jonathan felt safe and secure in his dwelling. There were no windows to singe him.

Jonathan settled down with a tiny noise of pleasure; the Count bent low and stroked his hair once, in contemplation. He crouched over him, watching; waiting for what would most certainly occur if the men involved in Renfield’s care were as intelligent as he perceived.

The younger vampire would perceive it as protection, rather than expectation. Mina and Lucy were returning from their own expedition, and could soon see the results as well. To the Count, this was good.

They would not leave _their_ work incomplete.

 _Finish your work, gentlemen. Finish your work, so my progeny shall understand the pain of his mistake._  
\--

When the four men met up again a half hour later, it was outside of the door to the almost abandoned wing. Before they entered, Seward pulled Van Helsing aside. “Simmons says he can do the translation of Mrs. Harker’s diary. In his spare time, he can do it, at any rate. Give him a few months.”

“Good, good!” So there was a bit of brightness in this saga. He directed Quincey and Arthur to move on ahead as they pushed the gurney, one man on each side so that the unthinkable of it tipping over would not occur.

Seward observed their progress quietly, before speaking up. “The third room on your left! You…should put him on the autopsy table that I’ve left behind in there. It’s sturdier than the gurney."

When he saw it sway as a wheel hit a crack, he urged, "And don't drop him!"

Arthur visibly blanched, but they continued to roll it onwards. The padded room, despite the horrors, would be soundproofed. Seward deemed they needed a distraction as they trundled towards the right room, and he took a skeleton key from his coat pocket. “I plan to schedule a visitation for him in the chapel among the attendants who did not loathe him. It will be a closed casket.”

“He shouldn’t have a pauper’s burial, Jack,” Arthur exclaimed. The horror lingered, even if he was quiet about it.

Quincey shot Seward a look as though to say ‘let him do this,’ and the man nodded to Arthur. They both guessed what he was going to offer before he did so. Arthur had been floundering since he could neither save Lucy, nor end this on what would have been their wedding day.

If Seward was going to set Renfield free of a curse, then Arthur wanted to help in whatever manner he could in the aftermath.

Perhaps Arthur also felt guilty for walking in, too late to assist in Renfield’s defense. Perhaps he hadn’t thought that he himself would have died as well if he had tried to break them apart.

While Seward did secretly wish to pickle Renfield's brain for later experimentation to see if there were visible signs of zoophagy in its folds, he suspected that the Professor would deny the request. He knew that the best and most honorable solution was a proper burial.

He would never tell his friends those private thoughts. They couldn't have understood his reasons.

“He won’t. I swear to you that he won’t,” Seward soothed the anxious man as he managed to get the door open at last. He had struggled momentarily, for he had used the key to Renfield’s cell at first, before he fished out the correct skeleton key. “I have plots for the patients that die under my care. Funds were put aside for him.”

Seward had other duties to perform, but what he had stated must certainly come first. “You may all attend his service, if you wish.” He suspected they would. 

“Then, he’ll have a better coffin than he might have had. I will pay for it,” Arthur added. He grew contemplative, and nodded at the last, accepting the awkwardly extended invitation.

Was it guilt for them not being able to catch Lucy, which had led Arthur to doing this? He wasn’t certain. “He suffered enough.” He paused, and thought about funds. “You have twice as much now, as you did before,” Arthur pledged quietly.

"I'm comin', too, Jack," Quincey vowed. After saying that, he hung back, and waited for Van Helsing to open the door wider.

“That’s why she picked Art,” Quincey noted to Van Helsing, as quietly as possible as he passed. “She saw he was an honorable gentleman at the core. He’ll see that burial done right, and not take the credit in public.” 

“On this night, gentlemen, we destroy the false Renfield so the true man might live in the hereafter,” Van Helsing solemnly declared. "Which of us performs a duty so grim? Is it to be you, friend John?" There was always the chance that another of their company would rather perform the act, and if they wished to speak now so be it.

They all stared down at the still and shrouded figure, once it had been moved to a spot that wasn’t so precarious. It was a table that had once been used for autopsies, and would see further grisly action on this night. The sheet was finally pulled off. It had remained, for none wished to look upon that frozen smile until there was no other choice. 

“He was my patient,” Seward whispered. “It is my duty,” he agreed. He would hold fast to the anger he felt upon seeing what Lucy had become. He would resurrect that disgust and anguish. If he did otherwise, then he would falter and crumple. “It will be my hand which does this.”

Much as a surgeon might hold out a hand to the nurse that has worked with them for an age and knows his requirement of a scalpel, now Seward’s own reached out and waited for the mallet. There was a dark humor in the idea that Van Helsing played the role of his nurse rather than his teacher, though it was quickly squelched.

Van Helsing placed it in his left hand; the stake went into his right hand, and Van Helsing offered his own steadying one on Seward’s back before he stepped away to the corner of the room.

They didn’t know what might happen. Quincey chose to stay close, with his gun out of its holster and held loosely at his side. He locked eyes with Van Helsing; the man shook his head and he realized it just wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t slow down a vampire, would it? It wouldn’t even kill one. With a sigh, he reluctantly parted with his favorite pistol and allowed Van Helsing to exchange it for holy water.

Van Helsing put the gun in a drawer, which he then left open so that it would not be lost if there was a fracas and a need to evacuate speedily. “This will be a fearful ordeal,” Van Helsing warned the men as they stood in a semi-circle around the body in this padded room.

Before Seward struck, Van Helsing began to read the prayer of the dead aloud. It was with him in his pockets ever since this grim business had begun, for one never knew if one would have need of it. One never knew when one might lose another to fangs and a vile form of blood loss.

Seward could feel the cerebral excitation was leading to the inevitable downswing of exhaustion in the face of this loss, but forced himself to trudge onwards. The prayers would just lead him to feel worse about this. The Professor needed him to be steady and end Renfield’s future suffering.

He knew the precise location of the heart, but had never taken a life, even in mercy. He had never performed the act of euthanasia, no matter how he had marveled in fascination at the concept in his cylinders. He held the mallet; the stake was poised. However, he found he was half frozen, until Quincey touched his shoulder. He glanced behind him, seeing a face that was a perfect interpretation of support personified. 

This was the baneful result of a vampire’s feast, Seward mused, as he prepared himself psychologically for the dirty work. He paused now to roll up his cuffs, concerned that the attendants might see him with blood on his shirtsleeves. Then, he stepped closer still to the body.

Why did Seward hesitate? This man was his charge, and he should be swift. He struck the stake with all his might. When Renfield shrieked, Seward jolted and collided with Quincey. The man had been trying to dart around him, to hold what should be a still body back, lest it rip out his throat. He moved around him, and barely managed to pull back the writhing form. Arthur remained stock still, and terrified. Having been seated on a nearby vacant stool, he finally leapt to his feet, before turning away from the grisly spectacle with eyes covered.

There was nothing Arthur could do, though. It was out of his hands.

Van Helsing was stone-faced, and gestured for him to hurry. Seward struck again and again, until the writhing creature—as red-eyed as that beastly wolf had been—quieted, ceased to gnash at the air, and, at last, stilled. Cautiously, Quincey let go; another moment of silence passed, before Seward, shaking and panting from the effort, dropped the mallet. 

All the men flinched at the sound of the mallet striking stone, for silence had been welcome after that shock. Quincey came over, and Seward realized he might have been all that kept him standing as he guided him out of the padded room they had made a makeshift hell, and into a chair in the corridor. Sweat poured down Seward’s face as he grasped the extent of what he had done. 

Seward reeled even as Arthur and Quincey flanked him; they had ushered him so hastily from the room so that he wouldn’t have to gaze upon the corpse a minute longer than necessary, and fill his mind with future nightmares that weren’t already riddling it.

There was more that could be done by Van Helsing in private. The head must be severed from the body; when another night fell and nobody was around to see, or they just had time upon concealing the organ in a satchel and handkerchief, then the heart would be burned following its extraction.

A bouquet of garlic would be added, more to conceal the stench than for part of a ritual.

There was no earthly token that caused the knowledge that Renfield was forever free of a curse. "Come, John. Return," Van Helsing bid his student even as he returned the gun to Quincey once he was certain bodily harm would not come his way. "Look upon his face."

Slowly, he did.

To Seward, after one last look, the man merely resembled an ordinary man, with a face lined by stress, and prolonged madness, and pain from the manner of his end. The body no longer moved, and never would again, for which Seward was grateful. That was all they required today.

Before Seward could do more, Arthur managed to silently convince him to sit in a chair in the hallway for a few minutes. “Don’t get up so quickly this time. That was a shock for everyone,” Arthur urged. “Just wait.” When Van Helsing exited the room, it was to see Arthur with one hand on Seward’s shoulder, bent low, asking questions to be certain he was well after that, and Quincey crouched beside him. Arthur glared at the Professor for urging him to look that corpse full in the face.

Renfield was but one that had potentially found peace. They hoped to free Lucy, Mina, Jonathan, and any others that were lost in the midst of this dark crusade. “He will never become fully a grinning devil. Well done, John,” Van Helsing quietly said.

He wasn’t a braggart; he was only letting his former student know that theirs was the right side, no matter the monstrous tasks that were implemented to reach the light. “He will remain God’s true dead for eternity. He has penance, and peace. He is wherever his mad soul wished to go. I doubt he is punished if sanity were restored in the great hereafter.”

Renfield was pinned like one of those wretched insects he so savored in the other room. With shaking hands, Seward mopped his forehead of sweat. Each man thought only of how this was to be the fate of Lucy if they could catch her.

Each man thought it. Only one spoke further on the topic.

“That’s what you wanted me to do to _Lucy_ ,” Arthur accused. He was on a short fuse after everything himself. He had waited to say it until Jack could prove he wasn’t going to be ill. He was looking at Van Helsing. “I wouldn’t have been so steady as Jack. I would have faltered!” 

“You do not know this fact,” Van Helsing argued. “You have not found her. You would be with more dignity than you think to save the young child.” Arthur was not angry with him, not truly. He was merely lashing out in the aftermath of witnessing that bloodshed. 

Van Helsing then turned away, and critically looked towards the window. Like Seward, he was wondering if they would soon hear a wolfish howl of anguish. He doubted they would. Not from that vampire; not from Jonathan.

He was far enough away by now, and enough time had passed, that their human ears wouldn’t hear a thing.  
\--

Even if it was night, it was time for Jonathan to sleep, for he had glutted himself on his first excursion in his new life. He felt the Count’s hand leave his head. His sleep grew deeper, and his dreams grew fascinating as he relived his first meal.

He then felt a shooting pain and started into a half aware state. He tried to find the source, but realized it was internal. It was mild, and then it was excruciating. It was coursing through his still heart, and shooting through his skull like a bullet.

He jolted fully awake, seeing both where he was in his coffin, as well as feeling another was holding him down. He could see a stake being thrust towards his chest. He shrieked as it was driven through his chest, feeling every agony and knowing with certainty this would be his last night. He dimly caught how shrill and bat-like his cry sounded, but wasn’t in any fit state to care.

From his throat the cries heightened, and rotated between screeches, howls, and further human-like wails. As he sought to escape, he shuddered forward until he fell out of his coffin.

Claws raked down the lid as he instinctively slammed it closed so that nobody could trap him and hurt him in there.

He scrambled into the darkest corner, shuddering with every breath he didn’t need, and keening. He managed to see the room for but a moment, and could see Dracula only watched him clinically.

Jonathan saw what Renfield must have been seeing; it could only be _his_ eyes through which he gained the man’s last sight of the hammer as it was raised a final time. He felt his fear.

He gave one last wrenching shriek for both of them. He was wrenched back to himself by the strong slap of a palm. He was gasping quietly, and saw it was only Lucy before him, and not a threat as he crept away. Even she was shaken, though it was milder. He couldn’t seem to stop shivering. Lucy looked perturbed, but allowed him to seek comfort in her embrace as a child would, when he crawled quickly forward and nestled himself in her arms.

Lucy stroked his hair even as one might calm a child of nightmares…or an old friend enduring unthinkable night terrors. His whimpers continued as he clutched his chest. She was careful this time, but knew that it wasn’t like when she had been the wrong person to tear him from his slumbering mind before the awakening. She pulled back, grasping his upper arms as she peered into his face. “Jonathan? Jonathan, stop this!” 

Jonathan felt his chest cautiously, shaking his head. He kept expecting to see blood pouring forth from a fatal wound. At Lucy’s touch, he began to regain his wits.

Mina was crouched close behind her, prepared to add her own efforts to either calm him or pin him down if it were something akin to a violent recurrence of brain fever. "What was it that caused him to make such a sound?" She asked, for they were on another floor and still heard him echoing through the corridors. Jonathan could only shake his head, and Lucy was as clueless as she was.

Mina turned to regard the Count himself coolly, for he was the only one that must know.

Dracula smiled coldly. “He followed orders, but went a step further. A particular matter occurred that was not fully in his power…if only he had stopped it. If only he had soundly taken away that potentiality. Isn’t that right, Jonathan?” 

The whispers were gone from Jonathan’s mind, and his eyes were no longer a vibrant and almost feral red. He was no longer seeking to hide, and felt ashamed at requiring comfort like a little boy. He realized what the whispers were, finally. The whispers were the sounds of the voices of conspirators speaking near Renfield’s ears, before they claimed his life.

He hated them for that pain.

Jonathan slowly nodded, as he tried to gather his wits. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse from all the various screams, though they all knew it wouldn’t be for much longer. “I…was foolhardy. I should—I should have never spoken with him. I should have done my duty, but I wanted to prolong my first meal. He—stabbed my hand, drinking before I drank him to his death. I should have struck upon first entering.”

“You made another,” Lucy gasped. “When you just woke up yourself, you poor thing!”

“You felt him die,” Mina breathed in horrified wonder. This was horrible. She was aghast even as they both remained protectively near him; she began rubbing one shoulder once he finally allowed a touch other than Lucy’s. “You must rest. You’ve had far too many shocks, even if we’re not mortal anymore.”

Jonathan looked warily from Mina to the Count. He knew there was more to be disclosed. 

The Count nodded with pleasure, as though choosing to accept a gracious honor, and was not instead informing the women of bad tidings. “He knows what I do. They are coming. We leave the premises prior to the hunters coming to our doorstep at the crack of dawn.” He turned, his cape swooping behind him as he moved to leave. 

“I must consult the most expeditious route as a result of this,” he explained at the door.

Lucy could see that Jonathan was still shuddering from time to time, and knew that something else had to have just been done to the one he had just felt die a second time. There was a quiet murmuring of ‘I’m so sorry,’ as he wrung his hands. When his hands went to his throat with a tiny choking noise, she suspected the other one’s head had been parted from his body.

It was a filthy thing to do to them! She gathered him close, as Mina began to pace.

Suddenly, Jonathan gathered himself with a tiny sigh, and took off in Dracula’s direction. He didn’t move as fast as he might have, but he knew where to find the Count.

The library. It was always the library with him.

“Do you wish to be brought to ground like the fox you Englishmen are so fond of hunting, as we all sleep unknowing?” Dracula wondered when Jonathan entered. He had Jonathan’s attention. He had his fears to play with. He knew them all, having caused so many.

Jonathan gently closed the door, knowing he was not allowed to slam it. The younger was vulnerable since he had felt the wood pierce another’s heart.

The Count waited until he heard a quiet ‘no, sir.’ “Do you wish instead to step away for a time? Do you wish to let them wither and die before they raise a hand to you? Would you like to keep our dear Mina and Lucy in the way of danger that _you_ have caused? Or should you prefer them to be safe? Would you like to be taught how to catch your prey so that they do not do such fighting back in madness again?” The smile was all teeth.

There was an answering red glimmer in Jonathan’s eyes. It was easy to tempt one so young.

“Of course,” Jonathan assured him. “But where do we go afterwards?” He whispered as though fearful of reprisals. He was.

“Leave that to me,” Dracula reminded him. A mulish expression was on Jonathan’s face, though it was not as strong as it would be had he not felt that stake; he wouldn’t let this go unanswered. “In less than a century, our foes will be bone and dirt.” He paused, as though to give the matter consideration when he already had planned this reaction.

“Would your Mina and Lucy not appreciate such a city as Paris, in time, when we have had time to recover? Perhaps in a century, after we have gone elsewhere?” He wondered.

“Yes,” Jonathan promptly, though cautiously, replied. “Yes, we all would. I had planned to travel there upon taking my leave of you! Had things been normal, at any rate, I might have.” He spoke as though it would occur tomorrow, and not months or even years from now. “I will have time to learn the language as thoroughly as you did English!” 

Would they be forced to entrap a French solicitor? Bah! It would be easy. “Then we are in agreement, and shall waste no time,” The Count smiled. “I need not advise you to gather enough soil. You have done so already. Be greedy when it comes to the earth of your homeland,” he suggested. He had seen how resourceful Jonathan was at gathering it. “Hoard it as a dragon would hoard its gold.”

He saw how frazzled Jonathan was beneath his interest. He could manipulate him further.  
\--

As the men spoke, Mina had her own opinions and worries regarding the situation.

Mina could not fault him for his feelings for the Count. It was to be expected. She herself was not so desperate to have Lucy, though they _were_ best together than apart. They were all feeling their ways around this new status quo in a myriad of different ways. Their resulting gifts were splendid, and the way in which Mina viewed this afterlife was—to pick the only word that struck her best—breathtaking.

Jonathan, however, appeared to be even less under control than she was. Had the Count caused this, as he had calmed him earlier? Had he organized things so that Jonathan would feel that pain? She felt focused. She felt like one had only to direct her, and she would be an avenging Fury. She was a weapon desiring of a target for either her will or her mind, or for her teeth if ample planning held no sway.

She was angry with the Count as she paced the halls. He must have certainly known what could occur when he directed Jonathan towards that endgame at the asylum. This Renfield sounded unpredictable from what she gleaned, and Jonathan was usually so organized. That aspect of him was not dead, but it was dormant. If Jonathan had tried to attack Renfield in the manner of his practice and his textbooks, and then grown angry, it was no wonder he had been thwarted.

The Count should have known!

She threw a dusty candelabrum in her anger before she calmed. She must cool this passion, lest she do something drastic. She had her theories, and was uncertain if he would heed her warnings. She paused in her fretting, and then moved to the dusty table, turned the chair alongside it upright, and began to think.

Only when she relaxed a modicum did she feel that she knew his intent. It was merely a warped manner of teaching on the older vampire’s part. She knew the signs; from a few of the words he had said when he allowed speech to be a part of what Jonathan sought, and not a mental communication she knew his intent. She had been a teacher, but had never been one so cruel.

Mina had a plan in its early stages; she glanced over to see Lucy warily approaching. She had thankfully given her a wide berth until the speck of a maelstrom’s fury had fallen away. Mina reached over, and tapped her chin knowingly, playfully, to let her know she was well. She knew that this side of her fascinated Lucy; she felt her coiling presence in the deepest recesses of her cold heart, and her spirit flowed down the chain of the link within the tapestry of her thoughts.

Mina’s smile grew gentle, then. “We’ll play later,” she vowed. “Let me first see to our survival. Then, we will have our time, dear Lucy.” Her friend; her maker; her lover placed her hands on her shoulders in a show of support. Mina saw an old inkwell, perhaps packed up with the Count’s belongings and brought here.

There was parchment as well. She took one sheet, with the intention that she may jot down her ideas. She shook the pen after dipping it after noting the scratches on the page did not show ink. She realized too late the well had run dry in the tiny jar; with an irritated sigh, she put the items where they had previously lain. Her planning must be done thoughtfully, and not transcribed in that case. It was much more fitting should anyone come for them.

Could there not be a ruse to baffle the sheep? Yes. _That_ was the way. She moved to her feet, pacing, and temporarily ignoring Lucy until she was certain of her words and actions. She extended her hand, in need of the touch of another. Lucy clasped it, giving her strength even if she didn’t know why. If Mina were still alive, she knew that nervous sweat would have made her hands slick.

Not being so, there was only the coolness of her newfound realm. Lucy stroked her cheek, and looked into her eyes. Mina nodded firmly. Then, together, as one, they began to stride towards the library.

It was always the library with them, she knew. Jonathan couldn’t change in that manner. The need to learn would always be prevalent in his attitude, even when he was only half of his old self. Even if he grew wild in his hunger and gave them away, it would still be waiting for him to turn, see it, and take it gently as one would a lover after a great time apart.

There was neither anger for Jonathan, nor was there disappointment. She could never feel that for him. His cries had been so needing of comfort, so prolonged, and so _tortured_ as he channeled another’s death that she never wanted him to feel such a thing again. She never wanted to _hear_ such a sound bouncing off the ancient stone again! Perhaps she was partially angry at herself for being unable to protect him from an unseen pain.

In the last steps some of that older fire retired in regard to the Count and his presumed machinations and Mina pulled ahead. She flung open the doors to the library, scarcely minding her interruption. She had merely followed the voices. Their flock had so much plotting ahead of them unless they _all_ put their heads together, and did _not_ do so _separately_. 

Nor would they do so in a way that would leave Jonathan believing he was to blame for all their woes. She would _not_ allow _that_ to linger in his thoughts for all eternity! She would not allow _that man_ to divide them! As she took in the Count’s grim face, and recovered from the sight of all those heaps of maps lining the cracked and dusty wall before her, she understood.

He _was_ planning, but perhaps she could aid in the formation of another. He planned for sieges and battle; she could plan for an escape without a loss among their numbers. She knew the region better than he did.

It was Mina's opinion that the Count was so focused on Jonathan’s presumed indelicacy—the falsehood that was his teaching method, and his delight at using it that went hand in hand, of course—in being discovered and the ensuing slaying of that poor man that he was completely ignoring a matter of vital importance.

Namely, exactly by what manner of conveyance should they escape? He had yet to state where they should move. It was just a recommendation in the future, and not a specification for a departure in the present that she overheard. She could use that.

“Before they try anything against us, I must remind you that you were the one to send Jonathan after Mr. Renfield,” Mina began quietly, though a steely resolve could be heard in her voice.

If they quarreled, she had ascertained, they would be lost.

The Count began to look amused, more than anything. There was no anger at the interruption or the accusation. 

“That cannot be changed,” Mina noted as she continued, unchallenged. Jonathan would always have her sympathy, even if he was no longer convulsively shuddering. He had pulled himself together again, and it was to be admired.

She was in her element, and her anger was draining away. “My dear Count, _I_ am the train fiend of the family; Jonathan knows the shipping schedules by heart. Between the two of us, I am certain that should nothing go awry, and should you have a man or two begin work now with the remainder of the coffins we have need to gather, then we can make this a smooth transition,” Mina pointed out calmly.

Lucy shot her a proud look, for Mina had her wits about her. She directed her unrelenting fury into something far more productive than the simple spilling of blood. Mina knew that using her brain even as a vampire should allow them to succeed where others were surely slain.

She stepped closer to the Count. There was a hint of fang as her eyes flashed. She would not be cowed by this man. “You changed a solicitor. A man with many resources at his disposal works for you. You need not break his mind further than you already have. You must use his talents.”

Jonathan gave a quick and quiet chuckle, despite his ordeal. She could see that he wanted to sing her praises in this matter even now for daring to speak up like this, but knew to restrain himself and await the Count’s responses to whatever the suggestion might be. Something unspoken passed between Jonathan and the Count, before Jonathan gave an amused grin to the man and nodded as if in confirmation.

Dracula gazed upon this woman and chose to hear her out if her plan had merits to it. From Jonathan’s expression, there was a chance that this woman should be heeded. “You do well to play your brain against theirs, Mina. Their designs, with their limited years, are mediocre. Do go on, and tell us how you might circumvent them,” he obliged. He would see if her plan was worth listening to.

Mina stepped closer and gave Jonathan a half smile for the admiration she saw in his eyes. That hadn’t died with his rebirth. He had his little hobbies and she had her talents, and hopefully this would aid their chance at surviving. What had begun as a way to aid Jonathan in his firm should he require help was continuing to prove useful. “Jonathan, you know the departure times from the dock. Which is the closest ship that could spirit us away?”

“ _The Desdemona_ ,” Jonathan replied without hesitation. There was also the _Czarina Catherine,_ but she would not leave port for a day following their need to flee. If the day was that which he believed it to be, he was accurate. Dying and coming back to life made his inner calendar sketchy. He guessed what her plan might entail. “She leaves tomorrow night, from London. She docks again in Cornwall to pick up a few things for the journey, and sets sail for the final leg to Varna in the night.”

“Book our voyage, Jonathan,” she urged as she took his hand. “That is my way of thinking.” She looked back to Dracula. “I will procure train tickets, and accompanying identification for the luggage car, should we be prevented in any manner. One set of tickets will be to Whitby, and if need be I will enthrall the ticket master so that he remembers only that set.”

She shrugged easily, though it was entirely without arrogance. “Let them come to Carfax. We will have departed for safer climates,” she said with great dignity. “Let them think you went to ground in the town of your arrival, my Lord.” Her using that term was not a sign of submission, she felt. It was a term of acknowledgement of their new station and what was certainly his higher one as the elder. There was some respect, even as there was anger.

“However,” Mina continued. She wouldn’t give him the chance to dismiss her. She felt like Lucy and Jonathan would beg him to hear her out if he tried. “We _could_ use the second set of tickets and fool them if we feel we must stay a while longer for any reason.” She paused. “In reality, should we have no need to stay, we will travel by sea. Not by land. Nothing should stand in our way,” she concluded.

“Where might you have contemplated sending us by this second set, Mina?” Dracula wondered. If it were a foolish thought, he would let her know that. He did take note in the pleasure in her eyes for him listening as long as he had. “What destination will you seek a route for, with us as cargo, while Lucy and I move house?”

For it was travel as cargo as he had with _the Demeter_ , or discover the potential discomfort of what the English dubbed coach.

Mina quietly strode to the Count’s collection of maps, silently waiting until all neared. They were as beautiful as they were old. They still had the locations she required. She tapped her finger against one location with unerring accuracy, for she knew it well. “Hampstead. _Hillingham_ ,” she articulated with a fond expression towards Lucy. 

“Where else could it be but home for one of us? By rail, from King’s Cross Station, it would be…the Hillingham estate. None would expect us there if any of your other abodes are rooted out, Count. If the servants remain we can bend their wills and either send them away or Lucy can do as she wishes to them.” Mina wondered if Lucy would require an invitation. She would be the proper owner, in a way, no matter who inherited it.

If they were prevented from entering for want of such a thing, well...that was a minor trifle, easily corrected, in Mina’s opinion.

“You’ve thought it all out so far and so splendidly,” Lucy breathed. In two steps, she was at Mina’s side and kissed her cheeks in thanks first, and then the lips. They tipped their heads together until their foreheads touched, and Mina smiled. There was an unspoken promise for something far less restrained when there was time. Mina’s arms wrapped around Lucy’s waist, and she leaned against her back, chin on her shoulder. 

“From there, the train would carry us further, straight into Cornwall. From there, the ship, if that pleases you more,” Mina said when she suddenly lifted her head to lock eyes with him. He would not find a way to tell her that this was unacceptable, would he? 

Jonathan had an idea strike him, then. “I can gather the night guard of the firm, sir. There is always someone tending to duties when a night owl cannot sleep,” Jonathan offered. “They can speed the process of obtaining anything if the ticket office has closed.” He paused, realizing how little he had cared for such matters earlier, when he was feasting on Renfield. “I shall strive for a…more normal appearance, if I am able.” 

He recalled the evenings in the castle, and knew if the Count had been able to look in a manner that did not elicit menace, he might have. The eyes and fangs could only be concealed so much. Was his own breath so rank?

“Yes,” Dracula replied. “I deem this an admirable plan. Make your arrangements on your own terms before dawn. Both you and Jonathan shall do this if you are able.” He had several boltholes for them if they _couldn’t_ accomplish this. He would make this allowance and learn their mental strengths. He was already realizing he may have underestimated her capabilities. 

“Strike while the iron is hot, as you English say,” the elder vampire continued. “From the house we move to, we then go to Hillingham. We will then travel from there along the rail to your seaworthy vessel, Jonathan. We will board them in Cornwall if we must, and go home by way of the Black Sea.” 

“It will take us to Galați, Romania, and Transylvania,” Jonathan noted joyfully, impressed by her mind yet again. He knew he would be, for she helped him so much. Only when Mina opened her arms to him did he embrace her, taking Lucy into the hug until one of them growled that enough was enough. 

Jonathan would never be fully certain which one made the noise, but it didn’t bother him even as they all mutually stepped away. 

Mina quickly clasped Dracula’s hand in thanks, to his bemusement. She accepted his offered funds without a word, and was out of view shortly thereafter. Perhaps she would fly to the train station. She had her ways, just as he had his. 

Dracula pressed a rusty key into Jonathan’s palm, once the younger man had pocketed the money. “Where?” Jonathan asked. He correctly surmised the Count must certainly have another residence than Carfax, but needed a specific place to target. Jonathan knew because they were linked that he had not been the only solicitor used to bring Dracula's possessions to London. Maybe they could rest there after he and Mina did their assigned tasks.

None would know where to find them outside of Purfleet or Exeter, now would they?

“347 Piccadilly,” The Count promptly replied. 

With a single nod, Jonathan began to gather himself for the task. He knew where it was, for he had passed there several times. It was opposite from Green Park.

"Use your mind as Mina did, Jonathan," Lucy encouraged before he could leave. She saw him fretting over how best to approach the workers.

" _Mesmerism,"_ Jonathan understood. He slowly smiled as Lucy pulled him close for being silly enough to forget that he had the ability as an option. Granted, he had been through a dreadful event. "They shall not question the strange hours I keep or the deadline or my unusual requests." Impulsively, he kissed Lucy in thanks, before he moved back with an inquisitive glance. He'd bitten her lip, but sensed he wouldn't be punished.

Lucy grinned, even as she bit him back sharply. "No distractions, for either of us," she insisted as his eyes gleamed brighter. It was the slightest remnant of a pull from how long she had preyed on him, on her part. She straightened his tie, which was loose and astray. It had been briefly removed when he went to feed on Renfield. He had just felt that wretched man's true death. Of course he wanted to feel as alive as they possibly could these days.

"It was a magnificent idea," Jonathan granted before turning back to the Count. “You shan’t be disappointed, sir,” Jonathan quietly assured his elder. He accepted his own secondary allowance of funds for this venture; through the Count’s thoughts directed his way, he understood it was earmarked so that he could potentially bribe a sailor to look the other way in particular matters, or gather a crew to move their heavy load. He and Mina needn’t waste time to send a telegram to the Count at all when their duties were completed, for their lives were so entwined.

It should be a speedy process all around, provided nothing untoward occurred, as Mina had suggested.

Jonathan consulted his pocket watch. Their deadline was six hours away, perhaps less. Either they would burn while remaining out and struggling to negotiate matters, or that Van Helsing would be waiting with more of that accursed holy water, or they would escape.

Could they do so in time? He trusted they might. He estimated which of his forms would be fastest; a wolf would be too conspicuous in this busy metropolis, while a rat was far more commonplace. It would be easily barred from his goals, and take longer. 

As Jonathan ran for the open door, he promptly shifted. By the time he passed over the threshold and reached the steps, he had taken to the skies as a large bat.

Mina had done the same earlier, he suspected. He had to admit, it was faster than mist. 

Lucy and the Count were left to wait for their currently hypnotized carriage driver.  
\--

When the men arrived, Carfax was barren of its former occupants. Van Helsing had earlier seized his chance and properly ended Renfield’s potential. With Seward’s help, they had moved the pieces away from the asylum via a body bag. 

"What did I tell you, John?" Van Helsing asked as they paused. They were standing in the midst of what, to him, evidently used to be a den of iniquity for unholy creatures, and the coffins were not there. He broke a web that dangled before his face, brushing away the spider that now sat on John’s shoulder.

"When?" Seward asked helplessly. He had said many things, but Seward had lost a patient to both a vampire's fangs and his own hammer and stake this night. He had overheard some of what was done to Renfield in the aftermath. It wasn't the time to be quizzed, even from his former teacher. "This is no time for riddles."

Van Helsing clapped a hand on his shoulder and leaned close. "We learn from failure, not from success! We will learn from this one, too."

"We lost Lucy," Seward agreed with an exhausted sigh. "As well as her friend and that friend's husband! I believe that we have learned enough."

Van Helsing was very grave, but not defeated. Not entirely at any rate; not yet. "We probably hear of more dead soon. Perhaps they will make the papers!"

"Would they go to the graveyard?" Seward wondered. Did Van Helsing sound relieved to his ears? "Again?” There were more of them now!

"No. They may go to ground. They may go to the origin of this contagion, wherever it rests, learning with their child-brains. They may seek a land where none know of their weaknesses, or know the danger of their great wiles and power," Van Helsing sighed.

If only they had guidance for where that was. If only they had more than letters between Lucy and Mina. Without a survivor of the vampire's bite among them--with only Lucy's hurried scribbles and those few letters--they were badly adrift. They did not even know the name or appearance of the one who had brought this unholy plague to their doors.

It would take time to translate Mina’s journal, for Simmons was dealing with a haphazard schedule. Van Helsing looked up as he heard footsteps, and saw it was only Quincey and Arthur rejoining them from exploring the place. They were just as empty handed; the coffins were not hidden in some secret passage.

Their clarity of purpose could only move them so far, and uncover only so much activity. In time, they might find some clues.

They were a few steps behind their quarry, but that couldn’t last forever.


	7. Chapter 7

They were in the last stretch before the station. As Van Helsing waited, he reflected. Mr. Morris would have joined him in his journey but for the fact that he desired to stay close to Purfleet should John need to be forcibly extracted from a bubbling cauldron of despair at the lingering horror of slaying Renfield.

Quincey also distracted him, and thereby prevented him from worrying about any potential inquest that had yet to develop from the circumstances of Renfield’s death and burial.

It had indeed hung over the doctor’s head like the Sword of Damocles.

He was a good friend, Van Helsing had realized. He was the best of them. John would be fine in the end with Quincey's broad and noble shoulders to keep him afloat.

And he had proven just as good of a friend for Van Helsing, for Quincey had provided a Winchester rifle for his journey. When Van Helsing pointed out that it was inane to wield such against the quick undead, he smiled as though he were at last wiser than the great Professor.

He had poured holy water on the bullets, he disclosed, and then laughed. This was wise, Van Helsing decided. It was indeed a ‘capital idea’ as the Texan had termed it. Should he ever be attacked from all sides, he had four bullets resting in the chambers.

He hoped if it were used that his aim would be true. It might save him the need for a stake, but not for further actions taken against the remains. He heard the call for all to disembark at Whitby that so desired, and put the gun’s strap over his shoulder. It could easily rest against his back.

He picked up his satchel and moved to leave. 

Van Helsing stepped cautiously off the train. Once he had readjusted the gun, he pulled his traveling cloak close to himself to ward off the chill of the wind. He had arrived in Whitby. This close to the sea, and in the middle of autumn, one could feel it in their bones. 

He (or, rather, Arthur, with his offer of aid prior to a speedy departure) had telegraphed ahead, so he would not be required to wander aimlessly and hopelessly outdoors until he was at an end to his quest. He had a room reserved at a small local inn, and trusted there would be a warm fire awaiting him. Once he had thawed out, and warmed his hands fully, he would discern which of the most likely haunts held a vampire in its walls. He must certainly ask around first, for there would likely have been ‘animal attacks.’

People always refused to see that which was in front of them. Even John had believed there was a natural cause to Lucy’s state until he was confronted with the evidence before his own eyes. He had to see her walking and supping from the veins of small children before he believed that a vacant coffin meant she could have resurrected. Arthur had believed she may have been buried alive, but Abraham understood the truth.

All of them did now.

Even if he had never truly witnessed a staking until he oversaw John’s wielding of one for Renfield, he knew. This would require a firm resolve, and he had such. Others’ hands may shake when they struck, but his were steady; this was necessary. This was God’s work. Were it not for Arthur being needed at his estate, John being needed at the asylum, and Quincey there to pull John up by his bootstraps, he would have gathered those three close. As it was, a letter would promptly be delivered to the last man should anything occur to cause his death or worse.

The only luggage he had to bring to his room was his satchel, with all the supplies he would require. The stake and the cross were its contents; the Eucharist wafer; holy water. And, within his mind, memorized zealously, the simple prayers that must be said over the bodies of each vampire as they were returned to the death they had avoided the embrace of for this unnatural span of time.

He would put the souls of those creatures to rest, whether or not they were ready. Whether the hereafter would damn them for their choices, it was not for him to decide. He was certain that fourth would burn for all eternity in the fiery pits of Perdition. That one which had taken their so sweet Lucy and replaced her with a she-devil nosferatu was likely an older monster than he could fathom.

It was the only way such a child brain could devise such a scheme so quickly, and usher his flock away.

Were they not meant to be feral, without sense or direction?

Van Helsing eventually found himself at the address he had scribbled on his small sheet of paper, and shook his head at the name. Surely young Arthur had known what he was doing when he reserved the room for him. Surely he had known the _name_ , and its meaning to their cause.

Was there more mischief afoot than he expected hiding within that man, or was it a simple mistake? Had he not given him enough credit? The Ruthven Inn. Van Helsing snorted once at the audacity of such a flirtation with the devil in giving it such a name, before he entered. Without pause, he moved to sign the ledger.

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing?” the innkeeper noted. He looked away, and began to search his pockets for something.

Van Helsing was suspicious, but hid it well. Was this man in league with those monsters? Would he be struck down? Or were the angels on his side, with a missive that would aid his cause? “You have something that I might require?”

“A letter and a card,” he replied. “Here they are! And here’s your key to room six.” He passed them over, and went back to calculating something regarding the price that must be paid for a couple checking out.

Van Helsing sucked in a breath once he rounded the corner, out of the range of prying eyes or ears. The card was from Jonathan Harker, Esquire, and appeared to have been written on neatly with a fountain pen. On the opposite side the words were penned precisely, delicately, and lovingly, as though they were the most important words in human history. “Eternally serving the most gracious of Counts,” he read aloud in his surprise.

This creature desired to contact him? Or was it something far worse? He tore open the envelope and began to read, half expecting some vile taunting about a massacre of those he held dearest. Or had they even reached Amsterdam? No, it was not penned in blood he had shed, with contemptible descriptions of his exploits amongst the innocent and pure. Instead, the words were much as he ought to expect from a solicitor, doling out just enough information to entice him.

The contents were thus read quickly.

_‘You thought to best the honorable and gracious Count, and the rest of us, Professor Van Helsing. You missed us in Carfax, and you do so again in Whitby. I felt what was done to Mr. Renfield; I knew your intent, and that was warning enough for the four of us. Be comforted in the knowledge that our Mina thought ahead, wisely and carefully. She had foresight enough to obtain four tickets here, while we took another route._

_Professor, we are not in Whitby, and never shall be again. No matter how long you wait on the shores, you will not spy us. I felt I would save you a rather foolish wait, for however short a lifespan you have remaining._

_The whole of our affairs shall never be fully grasped by any one person. We have taken such legal liberties as could be accounted for, and thereby avoided particular matters that would draw attention to ourselves and our protectors._

_It has been exciting, Professor. The holy water harmed me, but I have healed. I consider your bravado a learning experience. Fool though you are with your beliefs, as you are perhaps an equal in intellect, the Count sends his regards. For your sake, if you somehow manage such a feat, I rue the day we should all meet again._

_You will have just cause to rue it, too._

_You only bonded us tighter together with your efforts to hunt us down and destroy us._

_Sincerely, with the contributions of,  
Lucy Westenra, Mina Harker, and Jonathan Harker._

_Postscript: Did you believe that I would be so brash as to explicitly state the name of my benefactor in this letter? You were mistaken. I know that is what you were eagerly awaiting. Mr. Hawkins raised me to consider my words carefully in the practice of my profession._

_Might I now say that we go to the Continent? I shall never say which one, or in what order. My agency is mine own. Our ways will never be understood or respected by the likes of you, nor would you step into our embrace willingly. Our ways will never be your ways._

_In spite of the anguish both directly and indirectly perceived, I do so hate to let a mind such as yours go to waste. However, that is the way of these things.’_

He read the letter a second time, to be certain nothing was given away through a simple slip of the mind and the pen. 

Van Helsing was truly impressed in a grim way by the young three, for they had managed to thrive despite his efforts. They eluded him thus far. Mr. Harker was brash and bold in his actions in the asylum when he struck Renfield, but not so in his words penned precisely. There was a dash of humanity within him if he desired not to see him lost in this village. Jonathan was courteous beyond death and wry.

Was this truly a civil vampire, when the bloodlust was not enveloping his mind? Or was this a level of duplicity that he could scarcely conceive? He had no way of knowing, for he would never engage in a level of discourse beyond this.

In time, he knew that he _would_ learn of the Count’s full name. His scions would be dealt with. He would learn who their Master truly was. Such was the way of things, he was certain.

He would not destroy this letter. He would show it to John, and Quincey, and Arthur. He would be intrigued that the brain of a solicitor did not regress into simple childish insults in death. He knew this now; he had evidence of this in this letter. Something of the host survived when the parasite won and the body was made to seek blood for sustenance and joy. 

It was not the soul or a genuine compassion or humanity that lived on in the shell, just the knowledge and the talent. There was a base element that could not be erased. A question struck him, then, and he pounded back down the stairs and around the corner, to find the innkeeper.

“Who left this?” Van Helsing demanded as he brandished the paper like a banner. If it was not Jonathan himself, then who was it? He glanced at the name over the counter and learned this innkeeper’s name.

“A man in a carriage came by this afternoon, said ‘is name were Doc Patrick Hennessey,” Mr. Blair sighed. “Actually, that'd be a lie! Left ‘is own card, really, as 'is stuck to the one I gave ya. Said he’d ridden for days, cause he were told to. Looked tired; actually, looked about to fall over,” he amended with a shrug. “Must’ve been new at the post. Paid for my time in a few old gold coins, so he were memorable! Gone now, though.”

Even as he spoke, Van Helsing was given the card in question. He pocketed it for later. A carriage driver was in the Count’s employ! And, by the sound of it, also held tightly within his mental power of hypnotism, and formerly a doctor by trade. The poor fellow likely could not have betrayed the Count.

Why, that would even explain how they had moved house so quickly in so little time! A creature that could turn into a bat and a wolf or the other meaner things of the night could only get so far. He nodded to the man in thanks, and gave him a few lesser coins for the information.

It was paltry, but it must do. He turned again, to get back to his room. He doubted he would sleep, before he returned to Purfleet.

He must seek further clues. He would track them down, whatever Jonathan implied. He would drive a wooden stake through all of their hearts.

He could do little else for now but wait, and hope the day it happened came soon enough. Van Helsing leaned against the window and watched the horizon as the sun slowly sank; as he did so, he wondered if he would ever find them again in his lifetime.

Four months to the day after this concern formed in Van Helsing’s mind, Simmons would finish the translation of Mina’s diary. It had been a hectic period in the asylum, so he could be forgiven for his slowness.

When Van Helsing read the words Castle Dracula, in an entry penned on July 26th, he did something that worried those friends who did not know him all that well. He leapt to his feet, and embraced Quincey. Then, he threw his arms into the air and cheered like a schoolboy before anyone else was allowed to set eyes on the pages.

He had the vampire's _name_.

The emotional exhibition startled Quincey with its ferocity, but Seward remembered his former teacher’s display in the graveyard after Lucy’s burial. He convinced Arthur not to seek assistance from an attendant, and urged them to merely give Van Helsing space. If he sought to do a quick jig with any of them, allow it. If he required it, he had extra chloral to aid his rest.

They were satisfied that even if they could not reach their oldest foe’s castle in time to stop the spread of his contagion or bar his flock from migrating to places where nobody knew the terror that awaited, at least they knew his name. It was a start, and that was all they could ask for.

Van Helsing could follow his quarry for as long as he was capable of doing so, on his own if they could not follow for any reason. His friends would provide what assistance they could, whether it be in funds, or whether it be in an extra shoulder whenever opportunity allowed them to be present.

For these men, hope could spring just as eternal as a vampire's lifespan.


	8. Epilogue

The ship containing four unnatural creatures reached land with little problem.

Their ship docked, though few men were well enough to help unload the contents from the hold; the Szgany took possession of their so precious cargo, and continued onwards through Bistritz. Any villager who saw their progress hid once they took in the sight of the number of coffins and correctly guessed that _he_ had returned. Once the horses passed, they made a sign to ward off the evil eye.

From there, the Szgany continued towards the half broken castle jutting up towards the sky. The Count was their _boyar_. It was their honor bound duty to see to his arrival and protection until he and his progeny were safely out of their hands.

They shoved off a wild rose when one woman dared to throw it on the lid as they passed through the town. It would not be there long enough to irritate their master.

The coffins were transported through each small village, and eventually delivered to the castle safely. Before the last rays of the sun were gone, the Szgany unloaded everything from their cart. They then made haste to gallop away at breakneck speeds.

Their _boyar_ was delivered. They need not linger here.

Mina and Lucy were the first to open their coffin. Had anyone been there to witness it, they might have seen fingers stretch out from beneath the lid, and grab hold tightly of it. Another woman’s would have joined the first, and together they threw it off. 

Jonathan and the Count were each in their own. 

As Jonathan sat up, he looked around for any threat; he had half expected his letter to the Professor to have entirely backfired on them all, and that they would have found him waiting with his weapons as they arrived. He had been having nightmares of such, which had once spread from his mind to those of the others. He had apologized. He now glanced over, and smiled as he saw the castle doors.

The smile became a bemused smirk, for he desired to see just how those weird three ladies would greet him. Would they be dear to him, and, perhaps, endeavor to be sisters or more to him? Or would they be monstrous and see to end his undead existence? Would there be a middle ground?

Would Jonathan—and Lucy and Mina, for that matter, he corrected himself, for they mattered in this as well—be safe here? Now that they were all just as the three had been for centuries, would they be allowed to pass safely into the depths of the castle? Or must they all watch their backs? Would he be left to fight for his own meager scraps like a jackal before their ire?

The Count saw these thoughts and silently gave him permission to explore and learn if he were so inclined on this evening. The rest could see to the boxes of earth and moving coffins on their own. His would wait.

Jonathan spread his hands on the door; he easily pushed it open, where before, in his mortal time, it simply wouldn’t budge. He didn’t even require a light to guide his steps these nights. No, it would wait a few more minutes. He heard thunder, and didn’t wish their London earth to become mud. He didn’t know if that would ruin the power of it, and didn’t wish them to learn.

He turned back, once the door was opened wide. He moved to Mina’s side and lifted a box of earth in one arm and the burden of one of the extra coffins was easily lifted in the other. Mina patted his arm as though to thank him for being chivalrous enough to take one and not run off and play. She moved to carry the one she and Lucy shared, while Lucy herself brought up the rear and carried the rest of the soil.

Jonathan waited patiently with the door open as the Count brought his own coffin indoors. He glanced at the sky, and closed and bolted the doors. No hunting tonight, but they had fed well on the ship. “Take them to the crypt?” He murmured. He had already placed things down, so that he might open another door for everyone. The Count inclined his head in acknowledgement, though there seemed an air of expectation of bloodshed about him.

“They wait until you are alone, my friend,” he informed Jonathan wickedly. Jonathan said no more, for he was curious. He left them all as mist, so that he might better avoid the nuisance both of doors, and a physical confrontation when it wasn’t expected.

“When they finish, I will ask him if he wants his mound of dirt inside his pillow. He mentioned never wanting it out of his sight,” Lucy said with a demonic chuckle. Let _him_ get it in his hair every day.

When Jonathan returned, Lucy quietly passed the box to him. The question died away before it could be uttered. She dared not mention the still bleeding but healing slash marks across his face, throat and his back that had raked him, and left tattered fabric hanging off the back of his favorite suit. She saw the last when he turned away. There was coiled fury in his every step, before he finally dared to look any of them in the eyes. Then it gave way to an apparent uncertainty as to whether he should be smug or simply uncomfortable.

Mina shook her head when he finally looked her in the eyes. She could guess their greeting.

He sighed out of habit. They deserved an explanation, did they not?

Jonathan was restless, and irritable as he stalked back into the dusty entrance; he spun back around quickly. "The ladies were...not _inured_ to the particular thought of _me_ not being something to _drink_ ," he snapped. "I had my own concerns, sir. We may have negotiated a truce, though they drew blood of their own." There was so much hissing and leaping upon one another that something may have been lost in translation. They were either going to hold their impulses in check and be on good terms, or they were all rivals for the Count's affections.

It was uncertain, and he hated that.

"Such is the way of this," was the Count's serene reply. "You are almost beyond their ken. Our state of affairs was...malodorous, as you might say."

"I remember," Jonathan softly replied.

The Count clapped a hand on the younger vampire's shoulder, breaking the moment. "Come. While they lick their wounds?" Jonathan guiltily nodded, and the elder continued. "We will see if there is a proper coffin more suited to you among the many I possess. I sensed your fretful state as it leaked during a storm on our way here."

"The sunlight didn't reach me, but I thank you for the honor," Jonathan replied promptly.

"You should find one as well, Mina," the Count noted. "Should you find there is ever a need, and one cannot be shared."

"Thank you for the thought," Mina agreed. It was a practical suggestion that had merit. Should she and Lucy ever find the need to travel separately, they must be prepared. Should there be a quarrel or need to stretch, it would be even more necessary.

Lucy was close behind with their shared coffin as they made their way to the staircase; the men carried either a box of earth or coffin in each arm.

The vampires had escaped the cross and stake at the hands of dedicated individuals; the Count had seen to that. They had thrived aboard a ship; the four had only crept out of hibernation when they were closer to shore, for the Count had learned how better to avoid detection. Only then did his children glut themselves on the blood of a few sailors used to choppier waters than he created. The rest of the time, they had successfully abstained.

With four controlling the elements by night, the ship’s progress had been faster. With four controlling the elements, the ship did not crash upon the rocks.

The Count was pleased as he led his young ones through the dustier parts of the castle. They had centuries on their side, while their great detractors, those interlopers, had but lives almost as fleeting as a gnat’s. The lives of those mortals were to him almost as short as the grains of sand within a single hourglass. Their ends would come sooner.

The lives of those mortals were to him almost as short as the grains of sand within a single hourglass. Their ends would come sooner than his.

Let them try. If the mortals ever learned of their current residence, the Count knew his homeland better. He had extra native soil from Carfax for his children; his own land was plentiful for his needs in that regard.

These seeds were sown, and would take root. 

What could Van Helsing and his meager crew possibly do to stop them? They were thwarted at every turn. Van Helsing only knew of Lucy and Mina’s love; he only knew vague details of how Jonathan had succumbed to brain fever and been found in a convent. He did not have the fabled journal of that solicitor to guide his way or know his first destination, even as a memory.

Perhaps Van Helsing _could_ translate Mina’s diary. She had confided to Dracula that she suspected it might have been found in Exeter, if one of the men chose to snoop around. It would be of little use now, unless they were foolish enough to engage him on his own land.

By the time he and his acolytes set foot across the border and into the wilds of Transylvania, the Count would have taken them to more suitable hunting grounds. When these younger creatures did learn in accordance to his tutelage, well, then and only then could they disperse. He would oversee their behaviors until that day.

Perhaps in three months, they could leave Transylvania. Jonathan knew enough German, and could get by satisfactorily, while the Count tutored him further. 

Onwards, to Wismar! Onwards, to Paris! Onwards they would travel, to another unsuspecting land where nobody knew what they were, or how to stop them. They need not suffer or starve, sequestered in the crumbling walls of a castle. They need only feed to their heart’s content on the blood of the living.

The book of night was opened wide to the land of the undead. In time, perhaps, a few revelations would come to select corners for the world of the living.

_Finis_

**Author's Note:**

> -I felt the need to check the box for Major Character Death, as a result of Renfield's two deaths, as well as for the fact that Jonathan and Mina temporarily died on panel.
> 
> -A massive amount of thanks must go out to SeanDC for helping me beta read this story, and going over each and every new snippet that popped up as we went. Over 140 pages in all!
> 
> -I discovered that one of the various meanings of the name Moira is "to share," following the moment where Mina and Lucy share her blood. Gerard was named after a character from the original Dark Shadows.
> 
> -Kudos to anyone that happened to catch all the various Dracula related references throughout various canons that are sprinkled throughout the story.
> 
> -Simmons is the same attendant that found Renfield in the novel, after Renfield's altercation with Dracula that left him at the brink of death.
> 
> -Dr. Patrick Hennessey was from the novel, and worked at the asylum. He sent Seward reports on how Renfield fared whenever Seward was away. 
> 
> -Renfield’s date of death in the story accidentally ended up aligning with his death in the novel. Given the time it takes between Jonathan being bitten so many times, Mina and Jonathan getting fully turned, and reviving, it’s bound to be right around October 2nd or 3rd.
> 
> -For those that may be interested, you can find commentary on the writing of this story [here,](https://calliopes-pen.dreamwidth.org/1772551.html) and deleted scenes [here.](https://calliopes-pen.dreamwidth.org/1772885.html)


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